[Tom Helberg](/columnists/Tom+Helberg)  
8/12/2009

The Pulitzer-prize winning playwright will write and direct the film for Disney.

Pulitzer-prize winning playwright David Mamet is working with Disney to write and direct a new film version of "The Diary of Anne Frank," [Variety](http://weblogs.variety.com/bfdealmemo/2009/08/mamet-disney-team-on-frank-tale.html) reports.  
  
The film will be largely be based on Frank's famous diary, drawing elements from a 1950s Frank play by Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich, and Mamet's own take on the material, the Walt Disney Co said Wednesday.  
  
Dates for the film's production and release have not been set and no cast has been announced.  
  
Anne Frank died at age 15 in a German concentration camp during World War II. Her book, "The Diary of a Young Girl," tells of her family's two years hiding in a secret annex of her father's office building in Amsterdam during the Holocaust, from 1942 to 1944, the [New York Daily News](http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/movies/2009/08/12/2009-08-12_the_diary_of_anne_frank_to_return_to_the_big_screen_david_mamet_will_write_direc.html) said.  
  
Her diary was found after her death by her father, Otto Frank, and was first published in 1947 and translated into English in 1952.