ARGO

• BEN AFFLECK'S ARGO

Ben Affleck's next directorial effort will also be his next leading-man effort, as the helmer of The Town has cast himself in his fact-based hostage film Argo.

Ben Affleck

Variety reports that Affleck will star as Tony Mendez, the CIA agent who dreamed-up a fake Hollywood production in order to get six U.S. diplomats out of Tehran during the 1979 Iran hostage crisis.

An adaptation of a Wired article titled "How the CIA Used a Fake Sci-Fi Flick to Rescue Americans from Tehran," the film will also star Alan Arkin and John Goodman as Hollywood producer Lester Siegel and makeup artist John Chambers, respectively. Chambers, of course, created the makeup for the original Planet of the Apes.

The idea behind it all was that the CIA told the kidnappers that the six diplomats were actually Hollywood crewmembers scouting a movie called Argo. And this enabled them to get the group out of the country.

As the story goes, legendary comic-book artist Jack Kirby's designs and drawings were also used to sell the movie as a reality to the Iranians.