George Clooney looks like he is angling to win the Best Picture at the Academy Awards two years in a row. Having produced ARGO, Clooney added that statuette to his shelf, but he may be aiming for a quadruple play at the next ceremony. Clooney will be writing, directing, producing, and starring in THE MONUMENTS MEN, which just began production with an all-star cast.
Production began this week in Berlin, Germany on the World War II set movie. THE MONUMENTS MEN collects several past Clooney costars and some recognizable faces. The cast includes Matt Damon, Bill Murray, Cate Blanchett, Jean Dujardin, Bob Balaban, Hugh Bonneville, and John Goodman. Daniel Craig was previously linked to the film but his name appears nowhere in the official press release.
THE MONUMENTS MEN tells the true story of the greatest treasure hunt in history, The Monuments Men focuses on an unlikely World War II platoon, tasked by FDR with going into Germany to rescue artistic masterpieces from Nazi thieves and returning them to their rightful owners. It would be an impossible mission: with the art trapped behind enemy lines, and with the German army under orders to destroy everything as the Reich fell, how could these guys – seven museum directors, curators, and art historians, all more familiar with Michelangelo than the M-1 – possibly hope to succeed? But as the Monuments Men, as they were called, found themselves in a race against time to avoid the destruction of 1000 years of culture, they would risk their lives to protect and defend mankind’s greatest achievements.
I am as shocked about Clooney as a filmmaker as I was about Ben Affleck. Both actors have no right to be so damn good in front and behind the camera. Clooney has not directed a film of this scale before, but I trust he has learned quite a bit about action scenes from his time with Steven Soderbergh and Robert Rodriguez.
THE MONUMENTS MEN is scheduled to open on December 18, 2013, just in time for awards season.