The Day They Stole The Mona Lisa | Jodie Foster

[Cremildo]

As they sort through offers on their three Sundance films Shirley, Some Kind of Heaven and Summertime, Los Angeles Media Fund principals Jeffrey Soros and Simon Horsman are broadening the company footprint with increasingly ambitious feature films, scripted and unscripted series, and Broadway productions.

They’ve just set Oscar-winner Jodie Foster to direct an untitled drama based on the Seymour Reit book The Day They Stole the Mona Lisa. The film is being fully financed by LAMF.

“This happened in 1911, and it was the thing that made the Mona Lisa so famous,” Soros told Deadline while in Park City. “It was developed by Phoenix, which is still involved, but we have got a whole new script that Bill Wheeler is writing for Jodie Foster to direct. This is in the mold of The Thomas Crown Affair, with The Sting also a plot device comp. It is a fun story, and the crime itself is not sophisticated. Our story mixes truth and fiction, and the focus is on the characters behind orchestrating the theft.” source

[MifuneFan]

The actual story of the theft isn't really all that interesting, so this is going to be highly embellished no doubt. I almost feel a Soderbergh-esque comedy would work better here than a more serious caper.