Ben Affleck will direct and star in "Ghost Army," a movie about the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops who tricked the Nazis in the weeks leading up to D-Day in 1944.
The film features a screenplay by "True Detective" creator Nic Pizzolatto, and it's based on "The Ghost Army of World War II: How One Top-Secret Unit Deceived the Enemy with Inflatable Tanks, Sound Effects, and Other Audacious Fakery," the outstanding 2015 book by Rick Beyer & Elizabeth Sayles. The script is also based on the PBS documentary "The Ghost Army."
The "Ghost Army" used military "special effects" to mislead Germany into deploying its troops in the wrong locations to fight non-existent armies. The unit included future fashion designer Bill Blass, fine art painter Ellsworth Kelly, wildlife artist Arthur Singer, photographer Art Kane and designer Jack Masey. It's a fascinating group of soldiers who went on to become some of the most influential artists and designers of the 20th century.
The unit is credited with saving thousands of lives during the war, and their story seems tailor-made for the kind of free-wheeling, all-star, upbeat WWII movie that we haven't seen much lately.
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Affleck's most recent movie is Netflix's special ops heist thriller "Triple Frontier." He won an Oscar for producing the 2012 CIA Iran hostage thriller "Argo" (which he also directed and starred in) and another for writing the 1997 drama "Good Will Hunting."
![](http://images04.military.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail_large/public/2024-11/1time%20cher%20uss%20missouri%201200.jpg?itok=qi9yyMAM "Cher's more formal look in her 1989 music video, "If I Could Turn Back Time," filmed aboard the battleship USS Missouri. (Criteron Studios)")
