Mads Mikkelsen and Armie Hammer are teaming to play a Soviet engineer and his CIA handler respectively in the Cold War thriller “The Billion Dollar Spy” at HanWay Films. The film will shoot next year in Eastern Europe.
Based on a real-life story, Hammer’s Brad Reid is a fresh arrival at the Moscow station of the CIA where he’s approached by Soviet engineer Adolf Tolkachev (Mikkelsen).
Ignoring the advice from his bosses that Tolkachev is an obvious KGB ‘dangle’, Reid develops a bond and unique friendship with the Russian who wants to help his family escape the corruption within the Soviet Union and hands over a treasure trove of military secrets that alter the balance of power between East and West.
The pair’s success in evading the KGB comes at great personal cost to both men and a shocking betrayal puts them all in grave dange. Pulitzer prize-winning American journalist David E. Hoffman thoroughly researched the story based on previously classified documents and interviews with first-hand participants.
Benjamin August is adapting the script and Amma Asante (“Belle,” “A United Kingdom”) helms the project which Akiva Goldsman and Greg Lessans produce.
Source: THR
