Fremantle Italy takes on The Hijacker

Alex Infascelli is behind The Hijacker

The Italian arm of European prodco Fremantle is producing a documentary based on Pierluigi Vercesi and Raffaele Minichiello’s book Il Marine.

Set in 1969, Il Marine tells the true story of when Minichiello, an Italian-born US marine, hijacked a San Francisco-bound flight from LA and forced the pilot to fly the plane all the way to Rome. The event was the first transoceanic hijacking in history.

Fremantle Italy’s film is called The Hijacker and comes from filmmaker Alex Infascelli, who writes alongside Vincenzo Scuccimarra.

Infascelli’s other credits include one-off docs S is for Stanley, about influential director Stanley Kubrick, and My Name is Francesco Totti, which focuses on the Italian football icon.

The Hijacker is produced by Fremantle Italy with Rai Cinema, in collaboration with Fremantle’s The Apartment. Fremantle is also handling international distribution of the doc, which is due to begin shooting in mid-2021.

Infascelli said: “After Kubrick and Totti, I wanted to tell the story of a common man whose remarkable and controversial affair is typical of the Hollywood antihero: between sky and earth, between good and evil, seamlessly.”