Make it a Movie: City of Thieves by David Benioff
In our Making it a Movie section we play the role of movie producers and map out the movie production. Currently City of Thieves sits as both Keith and Dylan’s #2 & #4 books, respectively. A quick and entertaining action/adventure book set during World War 2 Russia.
Based on: City of Thieves by David Benioff
Genre: A mix of Action/Thriller, buddy comedy and coming of age story, with a war backdrop.
Logline: 21 Jump Street + Enemy at the Gates but also nothing like that.
A coming of age story set in the World War II siege of Leningrad. It follows accused 17-year-old thief Lev and a Russian army ‘deserter’ Kolya. The two youths desperately search for a dozen eggs behind enemy lines or face execution from their own government. It’s funny and sad, it’s inspiring and horrific. It has a great dialogue and great action. It is perfect for a movie.
Maybe now isn’t the best time to be doing a war set in Russia… but this book doesn’t really paint Russia in the best light.
Main Characters/Casting:
Lev – is the awkward but likeable 17 year old, that is still trying to figure things out. He’s not good looking or charming as his peers but he is genuine, relatable and someone you root for. Now Timothee Chalamet is likely way too attractive for this role, but he fits the description of the character and someone you can’t help but like.
Kolya – is outgoing, confident, charming, and attractive. He’s got the gift of gab and is the cock of the walk. As we talked about in the podcast, he is the guy at the party you want to hate but you can’t. He is so confident in himself that that he doesn’t feel the need to bring down others, but instead he builds others up. We went with Miles Teller for this – he has great range and is an underrated comedic actor (21 & Over is a sleeper comedy).
Vika – is a guerilla Russian Sniper who is off with a small Inglorious Bastards type squad, whose goal is to kill killing Nazi’s.
The whole book could have been about her and it would have been awesome. Despite the body count she’s racked up, she becomes Lev’s love interest. We went with Rose Leslie who has already shown in Game of Thrones she can play the role of a fiery redheaded killer.
Colonel Grechko – Doesn’t play a huge role in the book, he puts Lev and Kolya on their treasure hunt for the eggs. His character is a bit morally ambiguous as he has a good rapport with Kolya and could have had both of them killed but doesn’t. But he also represents the corruption and greed of the Soviets in charge in the poor/starving Leningrad. We went with Liev Schreiber who can walk the line of good and evil. He is can easily play the role of menacing colonel (and has a great narrator voice in Hard Knocks).
Production Notes:
Author David Benioff is very familiar name in the TV & Movie business. He also wrote 25th hour the book and movie, as well as a number of other movies (Troy, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Brothers, Gemini Man). He is probably best known as one of the show runners for Game of Thrones. The script has not been purchased and doesn’t look like there is any recent news on it. Hollywood is looking for original stories they got a great one right here, figure it out!
Who do you think should play these characters? Let us know! And check out our Full Episode on the book.
