With the 65th Berlin Film festival primed to kick off later this week, we can readily expect studio execs to offer up their movies in a bid to secure those all-important distribution rights. And of those attendees is Daniel Zelik Berk’s Damascus Cover, which recently tapped The Tudors star Jonathan Rhys Meyers for the lead role.
Based on Howard Kaplan’s eponymous novel, the film will tell the true-life tale of a veteran spy (Rhys Meyers) who infiltrates a dangerous area in Syria in order to smuggle a chemical weapons scientist and his family out of the country. However, not all is what it seems after our protagonist partner is AWOL before the mission can even begin, leaving Rhys Meyer’s character stranded and, in what is perhaps the movie’s most interesting sub-plot, caught in the midst of a possible conspiracy theory.
Set against the collapse of the Berlin Wall circa 1989, Damascus Cover will thrust the actor into an era rife with political upheaval, and Rhys Meyers couldn’t be more excited.
“I’m enormously excited about this role,” says Rhys Meyers. “This was a hugely significant time in the conflict in the Middle East, post-Cold War and with the collapse of the Berlin Wall when an amount of spies were redeployed to the Middle East, where the theatre of covert operations would now take precedence.”
Word on the Internet is that Zelik Berk’s production will get underway rather soon, too, as the cameras are set to begin rolling this week in Casablanca, Morocco. From there, Damascus Cover will hop to a variety of difficult locations in the Middle East, setting up a rather intriguing, globetrotting spy thriller. Joining Rhys Meyers for the spy flick are John Hurt, Olivia Thirlby, Igal Maor, Jurgen Prochnow and Navid Negahban.
