Henry Cavill and Eiza González will lead the cast of ‘The Ministry Of Ungentlemanly Warfare’, film adaptation of the non-fiction novel by war correspondent and military historian Damien Lewis which, as announced in February 2021, will be directed by Guy Ritchie, with whom we remember Cavill already worked on ‘Operation UNCLE’. Written by Ritchie himself alongside Arash Amel, it will revolve around the secret World War II fighting organization set up by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and British intelligence officer Ian Fleming (who later became a novelist and created James-Bond). The work of this clandestine squad, made up of highly committed elite soldiers who fought behind enemy lines against the Nazis using unconventional and definitely “ungentlemanly” fighting techniques, helped turn the tide of the war in favor of the Allies. . The project, which is said to be clearly reminiscent of Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Inglourious Basterds’, has been conceived as the beginning of a possible franchise and could have a budget of at least 100 million dollars. In addition to writing and directing, Ritchie will also produce alongside his partner Ivan Atkinson, Jerry Bruckheimer, Chad Oman and John Friedberg. The film, whose shooting will begin in early 2023, will be produced by Toff Guy Films, Bruckheimer Films and Black Bear Pictures, a company that will in turn be in charge of financing it and managing its international sales during the American Film Market 2022 that will take place in Santa Monica, California, from November 1 to 6. Although at first there was talk that Paramount Pictures was going to distribute it based on the agreement that the studio has with Bruckheimer, according to Deadline this is no longer the case, hence its presence in the aforementioned AFM. The announcement of Cavill’s participation in this film coincides with two other important announcements related to the actor. The first is the confirmation that he will reincarnate the Superman/Clark Kent that we already saw in ‘Man of Steel’, ‘Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice’ and the two versions of ‘Justice League’, in a new movie that could be directed by Christopher McQuarrie and whose development will be supervised by James Gunn and Peter Safran, remember, the heads of DC Studios from now on. The second announcement is much more surprising: Cavill will be replaced by Liam Hemsworth in the role of Geralt of Rivia from the fourth season of ‘The Witcher’, the Netflix series inspired by the popular saga of books written by Andrzej Sapkowski whose third season will premiere next summer. Given the coincidence in time, it’s easy to believe that all these announcements are related in some way… Let’s not forget that Cavill is also related to another possible and budding franchise: The one that is supposed to start with ‘Argyle‘, a blockbuster written and directed by Matthew Vaughn that Apple TV + will premiere sometime in 2023. Finally, it should be mentioned that Ritchie has two films pending: ‘The Interpreter’an action thriller currently in post-production starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Antony Starr, Emily Beecham and Alexander Ludwig, and above all ‘Operation Fortune: The Great Hoax‘, a film starring Jason Statham that was going to be released in March 2022. However, just a month before its premiere, STX decided to postpone it… and so far no one has heard from her again. Could it have had something to do with the fact that the “bad guys” in the film are… Ukrainians?
