While Paris still reels from the daylight smash-and-grab of France’s crown jewels—€88 million vanished in under eight minutes—Hollywood is framing the perfect close-up.
Veteran producer Larry Thompson has just green-lit pre-production on Missing Mona Lisa, a motion picture that doesn’t chase the ghosts of last week’s thieves… but resurrects the ghost of 1911. A grief-softened Italian handyman named Vincenzo Peruggia, sweeping the Louvre’s floors, night after night, until one evening the Mona Lisa’s half-smile stops him cold.
“She looked homesick,” he whispers to the empty gallery. To Vincenzo, she’s not pigment and panel—she’s a countrywoman pining for Florence. So he tucks her under his workman’s smock, walks out past the guards, and boards a train south. No lasers. No grappling hooks. Just a lovesick heart and a carpenter’s apron. Two years later, when Italian police finally knock on his mother’s door, the painting is propped against a bedroom wall like a postcard from a lost weekend. The world gasps. Overnight, a quiet Renaissance portrait becomes the global icon.
“When the Mona Lisa was stolen, she was just another Italian masterpiece by Leonardo da Vinci. Because of the global news of her theft, when she was recovered, she returned as an Icon.” Cut to last week. Thieves in hi-vis vests, a furniture lift, a shattered window in the Galerie d’Apollon. Eight minutes. Gone. History, it seems, is a remix artist. Thompson: “These coincidences underscore how history repeats itself within the walls of the Louvre.”
Principal photography begins early next year—Paris exteriors, Florence backstreets. An offer is out to Timothée Chalamet to play Vincenzo: doe-eyed, calloused hands, a patriot who mistakes larceny for chivalry. The script comes from art history professor Mark Hudelson, who’s spent decades nursing an obsession with the heist. In his pages, Vincenzo doesn’t steal for profit—he steals for love.
Thompson again: “This isn’t just a crime saga. It’s a romantic and cinematic story waiting to be told.” Because every empty display case in the Louvre isn’t a loss—it’s a story. Peruggia didn’t just take a painting; he minted a myth. Last week’s jewel thieves didn’t just take gems; they scripted their own sequel. In art, as in crime, the act of stealing can sometimes create something larger: legend.
From the city of light to the city of angels, the Mona Lisa is coming home—again—this time on the silver screen. For AIME, I’m standing outside Larry Thompson Entertainment, where the only thing missing tonight… is the popcorn. Stay tuned. The heist is just beginning.
