New Delhi: French director Romain Gavras is set to make a film on the Louvre Museum jewellery heist worth nearly $100 million. The case remains unsolved despite arrests and months of investigation.
The film will be adapted from the book Main Basse Sur Le Louvre (A Grab at the Louvre), written by three journalists from French dailies Le Parisien, Le Monde, and the weekly magazine Paris Match. The book was released on Wednesday.
The authors describe how the heist pushed investigators into confusion and uncertainty. Calling it “a dense mystery,” they wrote that the case “has plunged investigators into deep confusion.”
On 19 October 2025, thieves disguised as construction workers stole eight pieces from the French Crown Jewels inside the Louvre Museum. The robbery reportedly took just eight minutes and happened during normal visiting hours. The last major robbery at the museum took place in 1988, when the painting Le Chimiste de Sèvres was stolen. The artwork has still not been recovered.
Also read: Abhijeet calls ‘Chunnari Chunnari’ remake a ‘bhajan’, slams Varun Dhawan over remakes
Heists and robberies
Hollywood, meanwhile, has already seen a wave of films inspired by real-life robberies.
The Mastermind (2025), directed by Kelly Reichardt and starring Josh O’Connor, was inspired by the 1972 Worcester Art Museum robbery in Massachusetts. American Animals (2018), directed by Bart Layton, the film stars Evan Peters and Barry Keoghan. The film is based on the real-life story of two students who want to steal the first edition of John James Audubon’s The Bird of America from Transylvania University library in 2005.
The Bank Job(2008), directed by Roger Donaldson, stars Jason Statham. It is based on the infamous Bank Street Robbery of 1971, in which a gang looted hundreds of safety deposit boxes from Lloyd’s bank in London using tunnels.
Dog Day Afternoon (1975), directed by Sidney Lumet, revolves around a bank robbery in Brooklyn in 1972—the thief, John Wojtowicz, played by Al Pacino, takes hostages when he fails to loot the bank.
Similarly, in India, filmmaker Ashutosh Gowariker is working on a four-part docu-drama that explores the global network behind the theft and trafficking of India’s sacred temple artefacts. Whereas previously Special 26 (2013) directed by Neeraj Pandey, starring Akshay Kumar and Anupam Kher, is based on the Opera House Heist of 1987, where people posing as officers from the Central Bureau of Investigation carry out a fake raid.