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Phil Alden Robinson Writing J.J. Abrams' Diamond Heist Film

by Alex Billington
May 20, 2010

Remember that story we wrote last year about J.J. Abrams' Bad Robot picking up the rights to "The Untold Story of the World's Biggest Diamond Heist"? More than a year has passed since that news hit, and they've just now finally found someone to start writing the script. Heat Vision reports that Phil Alden Robinson, who wrote and directed Field of Dreams, co-wrote Sneakers, and last directed The Sum of All Fears, will pen this untitled heist project setup at Bad Robot and Paramount. Robinson isn't attached to direct at the moment, but you never know what could happen in the end, since Abrams probably won't direct it either.

Robinson will be adapting this story from a Wired magazine article (you can read it here) which described the true story of an unprecedented diamond heist in Antwerp, Belgium, and the crew that pulled it off. In early 2003, a small group of Italian thieves circumvented 10 layers of security to access a vault beneath the Antwerp Diamond Center and make off with a purported $100 million in diamonds and jewelry, making it the "heist of the century." Sneakers is one of my all-time fave heist films, so if Robinson can craft anything as brilliant as that, I'm definitely in. This is one of those stories I'm just waiting to see on the big screen.

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