Clooney has bought the rights to Robert M Edsel's book about government efforts to retrieve artworks stolen by the Nazis during the second world war

With two films – The Descendants and The Ides of March – featuring heavily in the Oscars race, George Clooney has announced his next directorial project.





Clooney has bought the rights to Robert M Edsel's The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves, and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History, an account of government efforts to retrieve artworks stolen by the Nazis during the second world war.



Clooney, who directed Ides and starred in Descendants, is likely to perform both roles for Monuments, after working on the script with his regular production partner Grant Heslov.



The suggestion is that The Monuments Men – which focuses on the art historians and museum curators involved in the search – will be a bigger budget film than previous Clooney projects such as Ides and Good Night and Good Luck: the scale will be more along the lines of Leatherheads, the 2008 American football film.



"If we're going to do a commercial film," Clooney said: "Let's do something that seems fun and actually has something to say."

• George Clooney
• War films
• Film adaptations
• Second world war

Andrew Pulver

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