Brad Pitt has been approached for a new Hollywood movie depicting “Operation Checkmate,” the effort by Colombian police, intelligence and military to rescue 15 hostages held captive by the FARC in the Colombian jungle for six years, reported Deadline Wednesday.
Pitt has not publicly announced that he will commit to the project which has been titled “The Mission,” but according to Deadline his agent and producers are talking.
David O Russell, director of the satirical Gulf War movie “Three Kings” as well as “The Fighter” and “I Heart Huckabees” will direct the film.
The motion picture will tell the story of the six-year effort to rescue Ingrid Betancourt, a Colombian presidential candidate, as well as three American military contractors and several Colombian military and police officers from their FARC captors. On July 2, 2008 a Colombian helicopter landed in the jungle and rescued all 15 hostages without firing a shot.
There have been allegations in Colombia and Ecuador that the Colombian government paid FARC for the release of the hostages, as asserted in the Ecuadorean documentary “Operation Checkmate: A Less Than Perfect Game.” Ex-president Alvaro Uribe, whose administration oversaw the mission, has strongly denied these allegations. The prosecutor general of Colombia reported Tuesday that it was investigating possible payments made by Uribe to the FARC.
