While casting was announced months ago, few details have emerged regarding the upcoming movie “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.”
Directed by Guy Ritchie with Jerry Bruckheimer co-producing alongside Chad Oman, the film is expected to be a blockbuster. An all-star cast including Henry Cavill, Alan Ritchson, and Eisa Gonzalez increases the box office appeal and fan curiosity.
The wait is over, as Henry Cavill has treated audiences to a first look at his newest project by sharing photos to his more than 24 million followers on Instagram.
The grainy and gritty images are perfectly matched to the subject of the film. Based on the 2015 novel of the same title by author Damien Lewis, the movie follows the true story of how, at the height of WWII, Winston Churchill and Ian Fleming founded a secret combat organization to oppose Nazi operations.
Called the Special Operations Executive (SOE), the group undertook operations including espionage, sabotage, and reconnaissance through occupied Europe from 1940 to 1946.
The units were given clearance to operate on their own deep initiatives, authorized to do whatever it takes to win.
Cavill’s character hasn’t been released publicly; however, the book has two celebrated war heroes as protagonists: Gus March-Phillips, a British soldier, and Anders Lassen, an aristocratic Danish soldier.
READ MORE: Movie star Raquel Welch, of ‘Fantastic Voyage’ fame, dead at 82
Directly employing approximately 13,000 people, 3,200 of which were women, “Churchill’s secret Army” established a broad range of influence and is largely credited as the origin for military Black Ops in use today.
Cavill plays the lead as the film explores the trials, tribulations, and sacrifices the men and women recruited into the SOE faced to help win the war.
Lionsgate has purchased rights and is eyeing a theatrical release in 2024, while Amazon Prime Video has purchased international video rights.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, filming is underway in Turkey as of mid-February. Turkey was devastated by a series of earthquakes earlier this year, an event that hadn’t escaped the film’s producers.
“As we begin production in Turkey, though we will be several hundred miles from the epicenter of the recent earthquakes, we do so with profound sympathy to everyone affected,” Ritchie and the film’s producers said in a statement. “Our thoughts are with the members of our crew with family in the region. We wish to express our sincere condolences to the people of Turkey. We stand by them and are committed to supporting members of our production team and the wider community over the coming weeks and months.”
