Ben Affleck has started the casting process for his Tehran hostage thriller Argo and the first name out of the hat is Oscar-winning actor Alan Arkin (Little Miss Sunshine) who will play Hollywood producer Lester Siegel, an O.S.S. veteran described as equal parts bookie and rabbi, according to Variety.
The film is about how the CIA teamed with the Canadian government to rescue six U.S. diplomats who’d been taken hostage at the American embassy by a group of Iranians in 1979 by pretending that they were part of a Hollywood film crew scouting a movie called “Argo.”
The screenplay was adapted by Chris Terrio from Joshua Bearman’s April 2007 Wired magazine article, “How the CIA Used a Fake Sci-Fi Flick to Rescue American from Tehran” and it’s being produced by George Clooney and Grant Heslov’s Smoke House to be released by Warner Bros.
