'Captain America' Chris Evans to star in Ethiopian Israel airlift film

Hollywood heartthrob set to play leading role in 'Red Sea Diving Resort.'

By AMY SPIRO
Updated: MARCH 26, 2017 16:06
Chris Evans poses at the premiere of "Captain America: The Winter Soldier" at El Capitan theatre in Hollywood, California (photo credit: REUTERS)
Chris Evans poses at the premiere of "Captain America: The Winter Soldier" at El Capitan theatre in Hollywood, California
(photo credit: REUTERS)
It’s a dramatic tale well-known to Israelis – and now it’s getting the Hollywood treatment.
Heartthrob Chris Evans will be starring in the upcoming film Red Sea Diving Resort, which tells the story of the 1984 airlift of Ethiopian Jewry to Israel, Deadline reported.
Israeli director Gideon Raff wrote the script and is also slated to direct the film. Raff is most famous for creating the wildly popular Hatufim – which was the basis for the US remake Homeland, on which he also serves as an executive producer.
Raff previously sold the script – which has in the past gone by the names Operation Brothers and Operation Resort – to Fox Searchlight, but that production fell through. Now Bron Studios is slated to finance the film and Alexandra Milchan – daughter of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s friend Arnon Milchan – is set to produce it.
Arnon Milchan has been caught up in the police investigation of Netanyahu and has been questioned about gifts he gave the prime minister.
Operation Moses, as it is known in Israel, was a covert effort by the IDF to rescue thousands of Ethiopian Jews from Sudan and bring them to Israel. The operation, coordinated with the CIA and the Mossad, brought around 8,000 Jews to Israel over a period of six weeks.
The 35-year-old Evans, one of the biggest names in Hollywood after playing Captain America in a slew of superhero films, is slated to play Mossad agent Ari Kidron, who helps coordinate the operation.
According to Variety, Haley Bennett, who starred in The Girl on the Train, is in talks to star in the film.
Most recently, Raff inked a deal with Netflix to produce a show called The Spy, based on the life of Mossad agent Eli Cohen, who was killed in Syria in 1965.