Waiting for Robert Capa is based in the love story and professional relationship between a young German woman called Gerta Pohorylle and a young Hungarian man called Endre Friedmann since they met in Paris in 1935 until she died in the Spanish Civil war in 1937. Both communists, Jewish, exiled and photographers, they decided to change their names in order to sell better their works and so became Gerda Taro (as an hommage to the Japanese Taro Okamoto) and Robert Capa (a mix of Robert Taylor and Frank Capra, so he could seem an American photographer). With these new identities, they arrived to Spain to inform about the Civil War. Love, war and photography marked their lives. They were young, antifascist, good-looking and nonconformist. They had everything in life and they put everything at risk. They created their own legend and remained faithful to it until the last consequences. Waiting for Robert Capa is a moving tribute to all journalists and photographers who lose their lives to show us the world’s daily awakening.

Columbia Pictures and director Michael Mann will team to tell the story of renowned war photographer Robert Capa, with a closeup on his torrid two-year romance with fellow photog Gerda Taro during the Spanish Civil War. The studio has acquired Waiting for Robert Capa, and Mann will produce through his Forward Pass banner.

Mann, who also directed biopic Ali, had long wanted to find a way to make a film about Capa and found his way in through the Fortes novel. Capa was shattered by Taro’s death, and though he’d later romance the likes of Ingrid Bergman, Capa never married.

Some 4,300 photos taken mostly by Capa and Taro during the Spanish Civil War were recently discovered, and the images will be the subject of a show to be held at Manhattan’s Intl. Center of Photography in fall 2010.

Mann, who last directed the Johnny Depp starrer Public Enemies for Universal Pictures, intends to make a gritty, low-budget film. He chose Butterworth based on his play Jerusalem and for a James Brown biopic that Butterworth wrote with his brother John-Henry Butterworth. The writers also teamed on the script for Fair Game, the Doug Liman-directed adaptation of the Valerie Plame memoir that stars Naomi Watts and Sean Penn.

To be produced by Forward Pass and Columbia Pictures, 2010