Steven Spielberg Set To Reunite With Mark Rylance For The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara

It seems that Steven Spielberg and Mark Rylance has found their muses in one another. Despite massive stage success, Rylance has made relatively few films, but now he’s set to work with Spielberg for the third time in less than two years (after Bridge Of Spies and The BFG), with The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara.

Deadline reports that the movie will be based on Pulitzer Prize-winner David Kertzer’s book, with a script by fellow Pulitzer honoree, Tony Kushner (Angels In America, Lincoln). Rylance will play Pope Pius IX in the film, which ‘recounts the story of a young Jewish boy in Bologna, Italy in 1858 who, having been secretly baptized, is forcibly taken from his family to be raised as a Christian. His parents’ struggle to free their son becomes part of a larger political battle that pits the Papacy against forces of democracy and Italian unification.’

The movie will apparently be Spielberg’s next movie, which is a slight surprise as he’s been busy casting Ready Player One. However, with that movie not due out until 2018 and The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara not due to start shooting until early 2017, it’s possible he will actually shoot the latter after Ready Player One, but it will arrive in cinemas beforehand.