Actor Will Smith and his wife, actress Jada Pinkett Smith, will co-produce a docudrama series, Munich 72, about the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games, with Telepool, a production company they co-own with Swiss investors, in collaboration with Hot 8 and the Israeli-run company Tadmor Entertainment.
The 1972 tragedy, where 11 Israeli athletes and coaches were murdered by Palestinian terrorists, was one of the most shocking acts of terrorism ever seen and has been the subject of a number of documentaries and made-for-TV movies from the 1970s, but it has never been the subject of a high-profile docudrama before.
Steven Spielberg’s 2005 film Munich looked at Mossad agents tasked with tracking down and killing the perpetrators after they were released from prison in a hostage deal shortly after the massacre, but his film did not concentrate on the massacre itself.
The series will consist of three episodes, each told from the point of view of a different person. It is currently being filmed in Germany and Israel and will follow the events that led to the massacre through archival materials and reenactments.
According to a representative of Tadmor, it will reveal, for the first time, the confidential protocols of the German government dealing with its failure to secure the Olympic village.
The cast will include Anat Waxman (Cupcakes, Nina’s Tragedies), who will play prime minister Golda Meir, Ori Pfeffer (Hacksaw Ridge, Messiah) as Mossad chief Zvi Zamir, Nati Ravitz (Hostages, Palmach) as defense minister Moshe Dayan, and judoka champion Sagi Muki as Yossef Romano, a weightlifter, who was among the murdered.
Roman Shumunov, who made such films as Here and Now, Berenshtein and Back to Chernobyl, will direct. Ronen Balzam, who collaborated with Shumunov on Berenshtein and Back to Chernobyl, will be among the producers.
The producers are planning on releasing the series in September 2022, to mark the 50th anniversary of the tragedy.