Director Steven Spielberg will start the shooting for Black September, a movie based on the 1972 Munich Olympics hostage drama which ended with the death of 11 Israeli athletes.

The cast includes Eric Bana (Troy), who stars as the Mossad agent charged with leading the band of specialists brought together for this operation, Daniel Craig, Geoffrey Rush, Mathieu Kassovitz, Hanns Zischler and Ciaran Hinds.

Rumors of how Spielberg would handle the sensitive subject have already been circulating.

"The attack at Munich by Black September and the Israeli response to it was a defining moment in the modern history of the Middle East," Spielberg says in a lengthy statement. "It's easy to look back at historic events with the benefit of hindsight. What's not so easy is to try to see things as they must have looked to people at the time."

He continues, "Viewing Israel's response to Munich through the eyes of the men who were sent to avenge that tragedy adds a human dimension to a horrific episode that we usually think about only in political or military terms.

By experiencing how the implacable resolve of these men to succeed in their mission slowly gave way to troubling doubts about what they were doing, I think we can learn something important about the tragic stand-off we find ourselves in today."

Shooting will take place in a number of European locations and New York City. Black September is scheduled for release on Dec 23, 2005 by Universal Pictures.