Fresh off his buzzy cameo in a certain movie that’s now in theaters, Henry Cavill has signed on to star in Guy Ritchie‘s action-packed WWII spy movie The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, which will pair him with Eiza Gonzalez (Baby Driver). It’s a reunion for Cavill and Ritchie, who directed him in The Man From U.N.C.L.E.
Ritchie will direct from a script he co-wrote with Arash Amel that is based on the popular book of the same name by Damien Lewis, a prominent war correspondent and military historian. Jerry Bruckheimer is producing the movie, which is slated to start production in January in Turkey.
Inspired by true events, The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare follows a secret combat organization that operated during WWII and is said to have included both Winston Churchill and James Bond author Ian Fleming. The clandestine squad and the unconventional methods they employed against the Nazis helped change the course of the war, and gave birth, in part, to the modern Black Ops units of today.
Cavill will play the leader of the secret combat organization, while Gonzalez will play a military sniper with extraordinary spy-craft abilities, and the film is said to have echoes of Inglourious Basterds but with franchise ambitions.
Bruckheimer will produce under his eponymous banner alongside Chad Oman, while Ritchie will produce alongside Ivan Atkinson as well as John Friedberg of Black Bear International, which will launch global sales at AFM, where it is expected to be the biggest-budget project on the block. Apparently, U.S. distributors are already circling, though not Paramount, oddly enough, even though that’s where Bruckheimer has a first-look deal.
Cavill currently stars in the hit Netflix series The Witcher, and he recently announced his return to the DCU as Superman, to the delight of many fans. He’ll soon be seen in Matthew Vaughn‘s Argylle, and Vaughn sure would be a great choice to direct a Superman movie. Just sayin’.
Last seen in Michael Bay’s Ambulance, Gonzalez has two major TV series on the horizon — Netflix’s The Three Body Problem and Scott Z. Burns’ Apple series Extrapolations.
Ritchie recently wrapped a Jake Gyllenhaal movie that’s currently known as The Interpreter, and Deadline broke the casting news regarding the director’s next film.
