Publishing house Eksmo is in talks with film producers about adapting its book series on Soviet intelligence officers, general director Evgeny Kapyev said at a press conference at TASS.
Kapyev said Eksmo is working closely with film producers, and that several production companies have already taken the publisher's books for review and are considering adapting them. He said he expects films based on the books to appear within a year or two.
About the series
The series, "Shield and Sword of the Fatherland: Declassified Cases of the GRU," is based on the fates of Soviet intelligence officers whose stories were long kept from the public. The books draw on archives released by Russia's Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff, known as the GRU, including operational reports, personnel files, coded dispatches and eyewitness testimony.
Summer 2026 brought two titles in the series: "Alta" by Oleg Roy and Sergei Davidenko, and "Khrushchev's Liaison" by Andrei Orlov and Oleg Roy. A third book by Roy, "Colonel Xanti: A Legend of Intelligence," is due in September, focusing on Soviet Hero Khadzhi-Umar Mamsurov, said to be the prototype for a character in Ernest Hemingway's novel "For Whom the Bell Tolls."
