EXCLUSIVE: United Artists’ Scott Stuber has reeled in a big package: Conclave helmer Edward Berger is directing a film about Evan Gershkovich and the harrowing year the Wall Street Journal foreign correspondent spent in a Russian prison on fabricated espionage charges after being arrested by the Federal Security Service.
Amazon MGM Studios and UA’s Stuber are negotiating to lock in all the pieces. Deals are closing for the script to be written by David Weil (Citadel and Invasion) and for Amy Pascal to produce. Stuber and Nick Nesbitt will produce for UA.
Also included is rights to the memoir Gershkovich is writing about his seven years as a WSJ foreign correspondent in Moscow, the last of which was spent in a prison cell after he was wrongfully imprisoned. His reports leaned into the country’s slide toward autocracy. The journalist ended his time in Russia when he was released in a swap of prisoners in August 2024. Before joining WSJ in 2022, Gershkovich reported from Russia for Agence France-Presse and the Moscow Times.
Gershkovich is in talks to be executive producer and so will Ella Millman, who is the journo’s mom and whose own book proposal will also be part of the underlying rights. The reporter’s memoir will be published next year in the U.S. by the Penguin Random House imprint Crown.
Gershkovich strenuously denied the flimsy espionage charges, and after he was freed, he and three of his colleagues leaned into the activities of Moscow’s Department for Counterintelligence Operations, and how it spearheaded a campaign to arrest American citizens on Russian soil, including basketball player Brittney Griner. It also detailed how Gershkovich was used as trade bait and how that department played a substantial role in “plunging Russia into its biggest wave of repression since the demise of Joseph Stalin.”
It is a prestige project for Stuber, the former Netflix film chief who last year revived UA under the Amazon MGM umbrella. Gershkovich was the first American journalist to be arrested in Russia since the Cold War. The imprisonment was widely condemned by America and countries around the world.
UA is currently producing several films including The Girl in the Lake, an adult thriller that has Scarlett Johansson negotiating to star from a script by Lauren Oliver; Kill Your Darlings based on the Peter Swanson novel and starring Julia Roberts; and Christmas in Paradise, a holiday comedy starring Nate Bargatze.
Berger’s Conclave is a Best Picture Oscar nominee and his cast just won the Best Cast in a Motion Picture at the SAG Awards, where Conclave‘s Oscar-nominated Ralph Fiennes won for Male Actor in a Leading Role. Berger is coming off All Quiet on the Western Front, which won four Oscars including Best International Feature. He completed production on The Ballad of a Small Player with Colin Farrell starring for Netflix.
Berger is repped by CAA, Casaratto Ramsay and Range Media Partners. Weill is repped by CAA, and both are lawyered by Jackoway Austen Tyerman. Gershkovich is also repped by CAA and The Cheney Agency for publishing, and Grubman Shire Meiselas & Sacks for publishing and film.
