IN DEVELOPMENT

The worlds of art and espionage share a common bond: Forgery.

Forgeries abound. People are seldom what they seem. And it’s very hard to verify what’s real. The Art of War follows the story of art as seen through the eyes of Max Muller (once known as John North), a U.S. citizen runaway, now a reclusive but brilliant Berlin art dealer extraordinaire, whose fate took him to the city thirty years ago. Max can’t travel back to the US because of the small matter of treason, betraying country to the Russians by stealing U.S. nuclear secrets from under the nose of his brother Sebastian (who ran the CIA at that time).

The world of art is a new global currency for criminals and terrorists alike. But for the CIA, it’s a hard world to break: all art has a story. Multiple owners, thefts, births, marriages, and deaths. It requires expertise, contacts, and decades of trust. That’s why they need someone like Max.

Lucky for them, they have leverage -- he needs his US passport back for a very personal reason: Lydia, his long-lost daughter, who has no idea of his existence, now a ballerina in NYC.

Season One finds Max helping the CIA track down the Imperial Regalia of Japan, which Hirohito’s security forces smuggled for safekeeping to Nazi Germany after Hiroshima. One artwork leading to another, like stepping stones over a river…

Max will unpick a puzzle that begins with a fatal home invasion, and ends with all-out war with a Yakuza gang in an abandoned Nazi war college in the heart of subterranean Berlin, as we unpeel the layers of forgery from his past, his family, and the city of Berlin itself.

It’s Raiders of the Lost Art.