Released early last year, The Adjustment Bureau was a smart, emotionally driven sci-fi romance that seems to be a bit under-appreciated. Hollywood seemed to recognize though, as director George Nolfi became a top contender to helm the sequel to Captain America, but after that didn’t come to fruition, he’s now looking towards his next project, which may send him back in time to Cuba.
The Hollywood Reporter updates that Nolfi has signed a deal with Fox 2000 to rewrite a film about the Cuban missile crisis, with plans to possibly direct the feature. Titled One Minute to Midnight, the film is an adaptation of a novel by Michael Dobbs. From Robert S. Edwards‘ original script, the book tells the tense “hour-by-hour” account of this major event. Nolfi had a strong sense of pacing in his directorial debut — and even his screenwriting work like The Bourne Ultimatum — so I can only imagine how well he could capture this time. We’ve seen films like Thirteen Days take on the US side of things, but this increased scope including the Soviet Union could prove to be more impactful.
Check out the book’s synopsis via Amazon:
In October 1962, at the height of the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union appeared to be sliding inexorably toward a nuclear conflict over the placement of missiles in Cuba. Veteran Washington Post reporter Michael Dobbs has pored over previously untapped American, Soviet, and Cuban sources to produce the most authoritative book yet on the Cuban missile crisis. In his hour-by-hour chronicle of those near-fatal days, Dobbs reveals some startling new incidents that illustrate how close we came to Armageddon.
Here, for the first time, are gripping accounts of Khrushchev’s plan to destroy the U.S. naval base at Guantánamo; the accidental overflight of the Soviet Union by an American spy plane; the movement of Soviet nuclear warheads around Cuba during the tensest days of the crisis; the activities of CIA agents inside Cuba; and the crash landing of an American F-106 jet with a live nuclear weapon on board.
Dobbs takes us inside the White House and the Kremlin as Kennedy and Khrushchev—rational, intelligent men separated by an ocean of ideological suspicion—agonize over the possibility of war. He shows how these two leaders recognized the terrifying realities of the nuclear age while Castro—never swayed by conventional political considerations—demonstrated the messianic ambition of a man selected by history for a unique mission. As the story unfolds, Dobbs brings us onto the decks of American ships patrolling Cuba; inside sweltering Soviet submarines and missile units as they ready their warheads; and onto the streets of Miami, where anti-Castro exiles plot the dictator’s overthrow.
Based on exhaustive new research and told in breathtaking prose, here is a riveting account of history’s most dangerous hours, full of lessons for our time.
What do you think about Nolfi taking on this story?