Jesse Eisenberg dabbled with biographical films in 2010’s The Social Network, where he played Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg. Now Variety reports the Now You See Me 2 star is going full biopic for an upcoming movie about Marcel Marceau, the internationally renowned mime and actor who was a part of the French Resistance in his youth. Eisenberg will play Marceau, who joined the French underground in Limoges, where he would alter the ages on the identification cards of other Jewish teens in an effort to keep them out of the labor camps. He also hid Jewish children from the Gestapo, and even posed as a Boy Scout leader to smuggle them into Switzerland. Sadly, when he returned to his hometown of Strasbourg, he learned his father had been captured and sent to Auschwitz, where he was killed along with so many others.
Jonathan Jakubowicz is writing and directing the untitled drama, which will center on this time in Marceau’s life. The director is reteaming with his Hands Of Stone collaborators, Claudine Jakubowicz and Carlos Garcia de Paredes. Baptiste Marceau is serving as executive producer, and has been directly involved with research on the film. Production is slated to begin early next year.