He's tackled gangsters, detectives, spies, magic and myths, and Guy Ritchie has a new genre in mind: he's on to write and direct World War II story Ministry Of Ungentlemanly Warfare for Paramount.
The studio snapped up the rights to the book Ministry Of Ungentlemanly Warfare: How Churchill’s Secret Warriors Set Europe Ablaze And Gave Birth To Modern Black Ops by Damien Lewis in 2015, and since then has churned through several drafts, including the current draft from A Private War's Arash Amel.
Ritchie will work on his own take on the tale, which takes place in 1939, when British forces were being pounded by Germany in mainland Europe, and Winston Churchill wanted to hit back hard. His answer: Stop fighting under accepted gentlemanly rules of engagement and create a group of warriors who became the first “deniable” secret operatives to strike behind enemy lines. They were basically the country's first black ops unit. Members were recruited, knowing they were likely to be killed. They became a very tight-knit group, and their work spanned World War II. They won important victories against the Nazis, breaking all the accepted rules of warfare in the process and using deception and even bows and arrows to dispatch the enemy.
Jerry Bruckheimer is producing the film, and Paramount will be hoping that Ritchie can finally shepherd this one to screens. It'll have to wait for him to at least finish work on his latest, a Jason Statham-starring spy thriller currently known as Five Eyes.