Anthropoid sounds like it should be a B-movie horror thriller with a giant, human-like, yet mutated monster roaring towards the camera. Instead, it’s a World War II thriller set to star Jamie Dornan and Cillian Murphy{
Sean Ellis wrote the script with Anthony Frewin and will direct the real-life story about the attempted assassination of a prominent Nazi official. The title refers to the codename for the Allied operation to take down Reinhard Heydrich, the high-ranking SS officer who helped oversee the Holocaust. Seen as the number three Nazi – behind Hitler and Himmler – he was naturally a target for assassination.
The men chosen for the task were Czechoslovakian army soldiers in exile, recruited and trained by British forces to parachute into their homeland and target the man known as The Butcher Of Prague. “I feel incredibly proud to bring the story of Anthropoid to the big screen,” says Ellis. “I have been fascinated by the story for the last 14 years and find it immensely humbling to explore the bravery of the men and women of the Czech resistance who sacrificed themselves for the freedom of their country while dealing a blow into the heart of Nazi Germany. In the Czech Republic, it is a story of great national pride and it’s time to tell the world that story.”
Dornan, currently on screen in Fifty Shades Of Grey, will next be seen in The Ninth Life Of Louis Drax, which should hit screens either later this year or early next, and John Wells’ still-untitled chef comedy drama. He’s also attached to 1960s combat pic The Siege Of Jadotville, which is scheduled to shoot this spring. Murphy, last seen in Transcendence and Peaky Blinders, will next crop up in Ron Howard’s In The Heart Of The Sea, sailing towards UK cinemas in time for Christmas Day.