Deadline reports a biopic of Winthrop Bell, a little-known Canadian spy during World War II who helped uncover the Nazi’s secrets, is in development from Wilding Pictures with director Adam Yorke (See For Me) attached to write and direct the film.
The currently untitled film is based on the recently published non-fiction book Cracking The Nazi Code: The Untold Story of Canada’s Greatest Spy by Jason Bell. It tells the true story of Winthrop Bell, an academic and philosophy professor who worked for MI6 under the codename A12 during World War I and then again in World War II, where he was among the first to realize the threat posed by Nazi leader Adolf Hitler when world leaders were still set on appeasement. Winthrop Bell’s work in the service is only now being more recognized through declassified documents. After the war, Bell worked as a historian in Nova Scotia where he chronicled the Canadian province’s history and passed away in 1965.
The synopsis for Cracking The Nazi Code reads:
In public life, Dr. Winthrop Bell of Halifax was a Harvard philosophy professor and wealthy businessman. As MI6 secret agent A12, he evaded gunfire and shook off pursuers to break open the emerging Nazi conspiracy in 1919 Berlin. His reports, the first warning of the Nazi plot for WWII, went directly to the man known as C, the mysterious founder of MI6, and to prime ministers. But a powerful fascist politician quietly worked to suppress his alerts. Nevertheless, his intelligence sabotaged the Nazis in ways only now revealed. Bell became a spy once again in the face of WWII. In 1939, he was the first to crack Hitler’s deadliest secret code: the Holocaust. At that time, the führer was a popular politician who said he wanted peace. Could anyone believe Bell’s shocking warning? Fighting an epic intelligence war from Ukraine, Russia and Poland to France, Germany, Canada and Washington, DC, A12 was the real-life 007, waging a single-handed fight against madmen bent on destroying the world. Without Bell’s astounding courage, the Nazis might just have won the war.
“This unique book tells the story of Winthrop Bell’s incredible, life-saving work, which alerted world leaders of Hitler’s plan,” said Matt Code, Producer and President at Wildling Pictures. “We were drawn to the book by the opportunity to tell a Canadian spy story and thrilled to find a story spanning multiple decades and unravelling little known parts of history both in Canada and the World. Jason Bell’s recount portrays the fundamental influence this work had on the events of the Second World War, and at this stage in the development, we look forward to finding the right partners to bring this important story to the screen.”
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