Film to chronicle life of Brooklyn Dodger Gene Moore

White Light Entertainment and MediaOne Ventures will be co-producing the upcoming film Playing With The Enemy, which chronicles the life of professional baseball player Gene Moore.

The film’s production promises to be a family affair. The professional baseballer’s son Gary Moore based the screenplay on his 2006 book Playing With The Enemy: A Baseball Prodigy, a World at War, and a Field of Broken Dreams. Moore’s grandson, actor Toby Moore, co-wrote the screenplay with his father, and will be playing his grandfather in the film.

Playing With The Enemy tells the extraordinary story of Gene Moore, a talented young catcher who was signed by the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1940 when he was only 15 years old. His career was cut short, however, by the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the United States' entry into World War II. The Dodgers arranged for Moore to join a traveling Navy baseball team that traversed across Europe, playing exhibition games and entertaining U.S. troops.

The team was later assigned to a Louisiana prison to guard a group of German prisoners of war captured when their submarine was forced to surface after experiencing mechanical failures. Because of the code-breaking implications of the sub’s capture, the German prisoners’ existence was kept a secret. Moore and his fellow guards began to pass the days teaching the game of baseball to the German POWs.

David Ranes will direct the film, which is scheduled to begin shooting this summer in Canada.

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