Production is underway on the Smokehouse production in Berlin. North American distributor Columbia Pictures and international distributor Twentieth Century Fox made the announcement on Tuesday [5].

Smokehouse partners George Clooney and Grant Heslov adapted the action thriller from Robert M Edsel’s book with Bret Witter and are also producing. Barbara A Hall serves as executive producer.

The Monuments Men is a co-production with Studio Babelsberg subsidiary Siebente Babelsberg Film.

Clooney stars alongside Matt Damon, Bill Murray, Cate Blanchett, Jean Dujardin, Bob Balaban, Hugh Bonneville and John Goodman.

The Monuments Men centres on a platoon of curators, museum directors and art historians tasked with entering Germany during the second world war to recover artistic masterpieces plundered by the Nazis.

Production will continue in Germany and the UK through June and Columbia has scheduled a Dec 18 US release.