Jagman Productions and producer Josh Green are moving into a high-stakes corner of World War II history, acquiring rights to Bruce Henderson’s Sons and Soldiers with Israeli filmmaker Avi Nesher set to direct.
The project adapts Henderson’s New York Times bestseller about the Ritchie Boys, a small group of young German-born Jewish refugees who fled Nazi-occupied Europe, rebuilt their lives in America in the 1930s, then returned to the continent in U.S. Army uniforms.
The story behind the film
Sons and Soldiers follows refugees who escaped Nazi tyranny and resettled in the United States before America entered World War II. Once the U.S. joined the conflict, the Army recruited them and trained them at Camp Ritchie, the Maryland intelligence center where soldiers learned interrogation, translation, psychological warfare, and other battlefield intelligence skills.
Their assignment was unusually personal. These men were sent back into war-torn Europe to fight for their adopted country while trying to discover what had happened to the families they had been forced to leave behind.
Henderson built the book from original interviews and archival material, tracing the Ritchie Boys from displacement to combat and into the final weeks of the war, when many were desperately searching for surviving relatives. A postwar U.S. Army report found that nearly 60 percent of the credible intelligence gathered in Europe during the war came from the Ritchie Boys.
That is not a footnote. That is the sort of statistic that tends to make Hollywood take a second look.
Why Nesher fits the material
Nesher brings a substantial track record in historical drama. He wrote and directed Image of Victory, which centered on the Battle of Nitzanim during Israel’s War of Independence and earned 15 Israeli Academy Award nominations.
His other credits include The Other Story, Past Life, and The Matchmaker. His latest feature, Our Loves, is scheduled to premiere in 2026.
For Nesher, the film is not only about reclaiming a little-known wartime chapter, but about how that chapter speaks to the present.
“In a time of rising antisemitism, this story feels urgently necessary,” Nesher said. “It challenges long-standing stereotypes that reduce Jews to figures of manipulation or finance, and instead reveals a history of courage, intelligence, and direct engagement on the battlefield. The Ritchie Boys represent a form of warfare rarely seen on screen, one where language, psychology, and identity are not secondary tools, but decisive forces. This film will aspire to bring that dimension forward with clarity and force to be as immediate and affecting as ‘Saving Private Ryan,’ while offering a perspective that feels both vital and overdue.”
Josh Green on the Ritchie Boys’ legacy
Green framed the adaptation as both a war story and a corrective to what mainstream World War II storytelling often leaves out.
“The book exposes a largely forgotten chapter of WWII history: how Jewish and other refugees who escaped Nazi tyranny became some of the most effective intelligence assets for the Allies, juxtaposing the broader sweep of World War II with intimate, personal, deeply human journeys,” Green said. “This story celebrates not just the mostly Jewish, German, and Austrian Ritchie Boys but also all the other unsung heroes and European refugees who risked everything to return to the fight and helped turn the tide of the war.”
Green’s recent credits include executive producing Sam Pollard’s documentaries I Was Born This Way, co-directed by Daniel Junge, and The League, as well as Ann Hu’s U.S./China co-production Confetti.
He is currently producing Macro’s adaptation of Reginald Lewis’s memoir Why Should White Guys Have All the Fun?, written by Oscar winner Kevin Willmott, along with an adaptation of Dr. Ronald Mallett’s memoir The Time Traveler.
Green’s development slate also includes biopics on Cuban ballet icon Alicia Alonso and college basketball coaching and broadcasting figure Al McGuire, plus a docuseries about the history of Willowbrook State Developmental Center.
Green is represented by Greg Pedicin at Untitled Entertainment. Nesher is represented by Gersh.
