After working with the Coens, Steven Soderbergh, Ridley Scott, Nicolas Winding Refn, Alex Garland, J.J. Abrams. and Rian Johnson, Oscar Isaac is now adding the most accomplished name in blockbuster filmmaking to his resume: Steven Spielberg. He’s in talks to join the director’s next next feature The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara, which already has Mark Rylance on board, Variety reports.
Adapted by Tony Kushner based on David Kertzer‘s book, it follows a secretly baptized Jewish boy in Italy who is kidnapped to be raised as a Christian, which ignites a larger political battle. Spielberg plans to shoot the film early next year after wrapping Ready Player One, which recently went into production. As we wait for more details, including Isaac’s exact role, check out Amazon‘s description of the book below, followed by a new video essay on the historical accuracy of Saving Private Ryan.
Bologna: nightfall, June 1858. A knock sounds at the door of the Jewish merchant Momolo Mortara. Two officers of the Inquisition bust inside and seize Mortara’s six-year-old son, Edgardo. As the boy is wrenched from his father’s arms, his mother collapses. The reason for his abduction: the boy had been secretly “baptized” by a family servant. According to papal law, the child is therefore a Catholic who can be taken from his family and delivered to a special monastery where his conversion will be completed.
With this terrifying scene, prize-winning historian David I. Kertzer begins the true story of how one boy’s kidnapping became a pivotal event in the collapse of the Vatican as a secular power. The book evokes the anguish of a modest merchant’s family, the rhythms of daily life in a Jewish ghetto, and also explores, through the revolutionary campaigns of Mazzini and Garibaldi and such personages as Napoleon III, the emergence of Italy as a modern national state.