Kuklinski's military ID
Shooting on Jack Strong, by director Wladyslaw Pasikowski - which takes its title from Kuklinski's CIA pseudonym - is due to begin shooting in January.
“Jack Strong is a thriller exploring one of the world's most fascinating spy stories,” enthused production company Scorpio Studios in a statement.
“It's the true story of Colonel Ryszard Kuklinski, a man who is stuck in the middle of a system and begins cooperating with the CIA, playing a key (albeit unseen) role in the Cold War.”
Kuklinski first reached out to the US in 1972, having become disillusioned with the Soviet system after the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, and the parallel clampdown in Poland.
In the decade leading up to his flight to America in 1981, he passed on some 35,000 pages of secret documents to the CIA.
In spite of his apparent support for the goals of Poland's anti-communist dissidents, many in Poland are still ambivalent about Kuklinski's defection. President Walesa himself declined to pardon the colonel during his first term in office (1990-1995).
Theories that the KGB took revenge on the colonel persist, owing to Kuklinski's sons' deaths in similar accidents while in the USA.
Pasikowski, who is currently in the limelight owing to his controversial new film Aftermath (Poklosie), wrote the script for Jack Strong himself.
Aftermath explores how a fictional Polish village tries to cover up a dark secret about the fate of its Jewish inhabitants during the Second World War.
It was inspired by Princeton academic Jan T. Gross's 2001 book Neighbours, which focuses on the wartime massacre of ethnic Jews by ethnic Poles in the town of Jedwabne in July 1941.
Veteran director Andrzej Wajda described the movie as “an excellent, compelling film,” and it film has been keen debated in the press.
However, lead actor Maciej Stuhr has been showered with abuse from some quarters on the internet, amid claims that he defamed Poland.
Casting decisions on Jack Strong will be revealed in January. (nh/pg)