Moe Berg (1902-72) was a famous Major League Baseball player. He played for 15 years for teams which included the Chicago White Sox and Boston Red Sox. He wasn’t the best player (his lifetime average was .243) but it was not the Major Leagues he was reporting to–it was the CIA. It was World War II, and the United States was focused on building the atomic bomb; Berg was tasked with researching German atomic energy advances. Paul Rudd will play Moe Berg in the upcoming film THE CATCHER WAS A SPY.

The film is adapted by Robert Rodat (SAVING PRIVATE RYAN) from the book The Catcher Was a Spy: The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg by Nicholas Dawidoff. Ben Lewin (THE SESSIONS) is directing. Jim Young, who produced THE MAN WHO KNEW INFINITY about the prodigious mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan, is producing. The film will be shot in Budapest. The script received support from the Sloan Foundation via the Tribeca Film Institute.

For more, read Science & Film’s interview with Jim Young about THE MAN WHO KNEW INFINITY.