George Clooney in OCEAN'S THIRTEEN (2007).
© Warner Bros. Pictures'
Clooney Plans Movie About Fake Movie
By: News EditorDate: Thursday, May 03, 2007
Source: Variety
George Clooney and Grant Heslov will co-write the drama comedy ESCAPE FROM TEHRAN for Warner Bros. about how the CIA, with help from Hollywood, used a fake movie project to smuggle a handful of Americans out of Tehran during the 1979 hostage crisis.
The story will be based on an article from Wired magazine. During the crisis, CIA operative Tony Mendez, a master of disguise was put in charge of rescuing six Americans hiding out in Tehran. He came up with the idea of using a bogus movie and contacted Hollywood makeup artist John Chambers (PLANET OF THE APES, STAR TREK TV series, THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU). Chambers and Bob Sidell, also a makeup artist, launched Studio Six Prods. (an allusion to the six Americans awaiting rescue) and announced their first movie project, to be shot in Iran. Both Variety and the Hollywood Reporter were duped into writing news stories on the film after Studio Six took out trade ads.
Mendez went to Tehran in January 1980 and told the Americans to pretend they were Canadians on a scouting trip for a big-budget Hollywood epic. The ruse worked.
