Aaron Sorkin has signed a deal with Warner Bros. to write and potentially direct a film about the unlikely father of the Israeli Air Force, Al Schwimmer.
The project is based, in part, on “America’s Greatest Gift to Israel,” an article published in Business Insider and written by David Kushner. Sorkin’s film will be produced by Gotham Group’s Eric Robinson and Ellen Goldsmith-Vein. It is currently in development.
Schwimmer’s story is certainly cinematic — he began his career as an aerospace engineer at Lockheed and, during World War II, worked for TWA and the U.S. Air Transport Command as a flight engineer. In 1948, as Jews were fighting to carve out a homeland for themselves, Schwimmer “masterminded a covert, illegal, international operation that was equal parts ‘Argo’ and ‘Mission: Impossible.’ Working with the Jewish underground paramilitary, the Haganah, Schwimmer led a team of WWII veterans to break an American embargo and smuggle 125 military planes and more than 50,000 weapons to Palestine.
They were supported in the campaign by a diverse and unlikely gang of volunteers, including Bugsy Siegel’s publicist, the mobster Meyer Lansky, Pee-wee Herman’s father and Frank Sinatra, according to Kushner’s article. One of Israel’s founders and its first prime minister David Ben-Gurion later said “America’s greatest gift to Israel was Al Schwimmer.” See? Cinematic.
Sorkin’s last feature as a writer/director was 2021’s “Being the Ricardos,” the true story of Lucille Ball (Nicole Kidman) and Desi Arnaz (Javier Bardem). It received three Oscar nominations (for Bardem, Kidman and J.K. Simmons, who played William Frawley, for supporting actor). Before that, he had written and directed “The Trial of the Chicago 7” for Netflix and “Molly’s Game,” all based on true stories. Sorkin is probably best known for creating “The West Wing” and for writing David Fincher’s “The Social Network,” which won Sorkin the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. He is also working on a screenplay that continues in the world of “The Social Network.”
Sorkin is repped by WME.
