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Mohamed Fahmy memoir to be adapted for film

The Marriott Cell, journalist Mohamed Fahmy’s upcoming memoir of his 400-day imprisonment in Egypt’s Scorpion prison, will be developed into a feature film.

Fahmy, an Al-Jazeera English bureau chief, and two of his colleagues – Australian correspondent Peter Greste and Egyptian producer Baheer Mohamed – were arrested, tried, and imprisoned in 2013, accused of conspiring with the Muslim Brotherhood and fabricating news damaging to Egypt. Greste eventually was deported, and Fahmy and Mohamed were pardoned and released in October 2015.

Penguin Random House will publish Fahmy’s memoir this fall. The book will be adapted by Michael Bronner, a former 60 Minutes journalist and co-producer of the films Captain Phillips and United 93. Amr Waked, the Egyptian actor–producer, is developing the film with British company the Development Partnership.

In a statement, Fahmy said the film “is going to allow us to relive and dramatically portray what no news reel grasped: one’s inner voice caught in an emotional struggle between lawlessness, failed corporation decisions, and bureaucratic red tape that left us in a vicious Kafquesqe black hole fighting for our lives.”