[Monica Burton](/columnists/Monica+Burton)  
8/12/2009

David Mamet will write and direct a new screen adaptation of "The Diary of Anne Frank."

Pulitzer-prize winning playwright David Mamet is teaming up with Disney to write and direct a new adaptation of "The Diary of Anne Frank," the New York Daily News reports.  
  
According to Variety, Mamet will work with producer Andrew Braunsberg who previously produced the film "Being There."  
  
In writing the screenplay, Mamet will take heavily from the diary Anne Frank left behind in her family's hiding place in Amsterdam. Frank kept a diary for the two years they spent living in secret during the Holocaust, from 1942 to 1944.  
  
Her father, Otto Frank, discovered the diary after her death at a concentration camp in 1945. It was first published in 1947 and translated into English in 1952.  
  
Mamet will also look at Albert Hackett's and Frances Goodrich's play, "The Diary of Anne Frank," which premiered in 1955.  
  
Producer Braunsberg spent a year negotiating with the estates of Frank, Hackett and Goodrich to obtain the rights to the story. Braunsberg then chose Mamet to write and direct.  
  
In the past year, two of Mamet's works have been revived on Broadway: "Speed the Plow" and "American Buffalo." A revival of his controversial play "Oleanna" will come to Broadway in Octoboer and he will make his directorial debut in "Race," another of his own plays, in December.