The working title for the film was Vengeance. Only the company credits, title and prologue appear before the film; all other credits are at the end. The following written prologue appears in the opening onscreen credits: “Inspired by real events.” There are numerous misspellings and inconsistencies in the cast and crew names and some character names in the onscreen credits. The closing credits state that Munich was filmed with the support of financial incentives provided by the Government of Malta, and Hungarian sponsorship was provided by the Bank of Budapest.
       The film opens with the arrival of Black September, an extremist Palestinian group, at the Olympic Village, the dormitory break-in and killing of two Israeli athletes, then proceeds to follow the course of the attack through television news reports. The actual details of the event are shown sporadically throughout the film, with the death of the nine Israeli hostages shown near the end of the film. The film’s final shot of the New York City skyline featured the World Trade Center Twin Towers, which were destroyed in the Sep 2001 terrorist attack.
       An Apr 2004 NYT article announced director Steven Spielberg’s intention to begin production on Munich in Jun 2004. Munich was the first feature film script by playwright Tony Kushner, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play Angels in America and its HBO television adaptation. Spielberg’s son Theo served as a production assistant on the film and his daughter Sasha appeared in a bit role. The Apr 2004 NYT article listed Ben Kingsley as a possible star, but he was not in the film. Some online sources add the following actors to the cast: Mosko Alkalai, Lili Bordán, Arthur Chazal, Marcus Collins, Greg D’Agostino, Fran Labbe, Arnaud Marciszewer, George Mendel, Ben O’Brien, Dov Reiser, Eva Röse, Jean Smart and Guy Zoaretz. Munich was filmed in Malta, Paris, Hungary and New York and completed principal photography in Oct 2005 for a Dec 2005 release.
       Munich had a lengthy pre-production history. According to an 18 Dec 2005 LAT feature article, in the late 1990s producer Barry Mendel purchased the rights to George Jonas' 1984 book Vengeance, which detailed the clandestine Israeli response to the murder of eleven of its athletes competing in the XX Olympiad in Munich, West Germany in Sep 1972. In 1986 the book had been produced as a highly praised, HBO cable television movie, Sword of Gideon, starring Steven Bauer and Michael York and directed by Michael Anderson. Mendel brought the property to producer Kathleen Kennedy, who commissioned three successive scripts. Janet and David Peoples wrote the initial draft and Eric Roth worked on numerous drafts, according to an 18 Dec 2005 LAT article. According to an earlier 4 Dec 2005 LAT article, Charles Randolph contributed a polish of the Roth script, before Kushner began working on it. The 18 Dec 2005 LAT piece stated that Randolph had written a complete draft of Munich. A 12 Dec 2005 Time feature article on the film does not mention the contributions of either Randolph or Roth, the latter of whom received screen credit beneath Kushner. Both Time and the 18 Dec 2005 LAT article stated that Kushner’s initial draft was over 300 pages in length.
       According to the Time article, Kennedy, a frequent production partner with Spielberg, proposed the project to the director, but Spielberg expressed uneasiness over taking on a project about the difficult and emotionally volatile politics of the Middle East. After the Sep 2001 terrorist attacks, according to the LAT piece, Spielberg shied further away from the material as potentially exploitative. He remained interested in the project, however, and after discussing the script with playwright Kushner, decided to commit to the production. Spielberg purportedly was impressed by Kushner’s input on the production, partially because of Kushner’s involvement with the editing of a book on the American view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
       Numerous articles on Munich noted that Vengeance met with controversy from the time of its publication, with its veracity coming under question. A Jul 2005 Var article quoted a former Mossad (Israeli Intelligence Agency) agent as describing the Jonas book as “nonsense, totally baseless.” The former agent did not dispute the mission itself, but rather the portrayal of the agents and the manner in which the operations were conducted. A Jul 2005 The Times (London) article stated another criticism of the book was that the Mossad agent who was the basis for “Avner Kauffman” was actually only an El Al airlines security guard. Both Vengance and the film mention that Avner’s Mossad work included time as an airline security agent. The 18 Dec 2005 LAT article on Munich indicated that press accounts widely assumed Avner was based on Israeli security expert Yuval Aviv, whom Jonas, in a legal dispute over the book’s rights, described as a “key source” for Vengeance. Spielberg and Kushner recounted meeting the “real agent” described in the book, but refused to identify him. Spielberg’s spokesman mentioned in the LAT article that much of the controversy surrounding the book stemmed from the fact that Israel has never formally admitted that Prime Minister Golda Meir authorized assassination squads to retaliate for the Munich massacre.
       Other articles and sources noted that the main discrepancy of Jonas’ book is its evasion of the fact that the Palestinians killed by the special unit from 1972 to 1974 were low-level Black September members not directly linked to the Munich attack. The Var article quoted Spielberg as stating that Vengeance was only one source used for the script’s development. Although Spielberg showed the completed script to various political experts, several articles quoted former Mossad head Zvi Zamir (who is depicted in Munich) and Abu Daoud, the Palestinian generally credited as one of the masterminds behind the Munich attack and a co-founder of Black September, as complaining about not being consulted during the script’s development.
       Munich details the massacre that occurred at the 1972 Munich Olympics, when eleven Israeli athletes were attacked in their dormitory apartments by members of Black September. Two Israeli athletes were initially killed in the dormitory and the other nine held hostage for nearly a day. The athletes, five members of Black September and a German policeman died at the Fürstenfeldbruck military airfield during a botched rescue attempt by German security.
       Black September has been defined as an offshoot of the Fatah (a reverse acronym for the Palestine Liberation Movement or “conquest”) movement of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, a multi-party federation dedicated to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state. Black September was formed in 1970 as a response to the violent expulsion from Jordan of Palestinian refugees by King Hussein. Although Black September was originally a small group of fedayeen (one ready to sacrifice his life for a cause) out to seek revenge on Jordan, their objectives soon focused on the Palestinian situation and the group participated in numerous international political assassinations and airplane hijackings from 1971 to 1973.
       The group’s best known operation was the attack against the Israeli athletes in Munich. Black September was disbanded in 1973 by the P.L.O. when leader Yasser Arafat declared it would restrict attacks to Israel and the territories occupied by the 1967 6-Day War. Black September’s unprecedented attack at Munich, highlighted by worldwide television coverage, has been cited by many experts as a major turning point in international terrorism.
       Portions of the opening sequences in Munich use the actual coverage by America’s ABC television network, which broadcast the Olympic Games. The film shows the iconic moment when popular ABC sportscaster Jim McKay received notification of the Israeli athletes’ deaths, and stated, “They’re all gone.” Spielberg duplicated other well-known televised moments from the 23-hour ordeal, such as that of a masked terrorist cautiously stepping out onto the balcony of one of the dormitory apartments. The voices of ABC reporters Howard Cosell (1918—1995) and Peter Jennings (1938—2005) are also heard throughout the opening sequences of Munich.
       As mentioned in the film and confirmed in various historical sources, just three days after the Munich assault, Israel retaliated with a massive military air strike against ten P.L.O. bases just inside Syria and Lebanon. Another strike took place a week later. As noted in historical sources, despite the ferocity of these attacks, many within the Israeli government felt the brutality of the Munich attack warranted a still stronger response. Prominent among those was Mossad head Zamir, who had flown to Munich during the crisis. Although Israel already had a covert anti-terrorist unit designated Caesarea, within ten days of Munich, Prime Minister Meir authorized a plan to eliminate “terror operatives” through a series of assassinations aimed at the leaders and plotters of Fatah and Black September. The plan, mentioned in many contemporary sources, was dubbed “Wrath of God,” which is not referred to by name in Munich. The head of the mission was the commander of Caesarea, Martin Harari, depicted briefly in the film as one of the important security figures at Meir’s home. According to historical documents on the Olympic attack and its aftermath released years after Vengeance, Harari personally oversaw three assassination teams that comprised “Wrath of God.” These same sources note the fact, not mentioned in Munich, that each strike had to have the prime minister’s approval and, although the strikes may have been discussed with cabinet members, the decision to proceed in each case was Meir’s alone in the first two years of the operation. Although Vengeance and Munich suggest that the retaliatory mission against those who plotted the Olympic attack ended by late 1973 or early 1974, other historical sources confirm that in reality it continued until 1992, with each succeeding Israeli prime minister signing off on approved targets.
       As mentioned in the movie, just weeks after Munich, Israel was stunned by the release of the three surviving Black September members, who were being held by German security. The men were freed as part of an agreement with a faction of the P.L.O. after the hijacking of a Lufthansa airplane (carrying only thirteen passengers). Years later, inquiries suggested that the hijacking was coordinated in advance between Palestinians and Germany, which was uncomfortable holding the Black September members and fearful of further terrorist attacks on its soil. After the release of the Palestinians, no acts of terrorism occurred in West Germany until the late 1980s. Of the three survivors, two were eventually killed by “Wrath of God” agents and one remains alive in hiding. The surviving member participated (appearing in shadow) in the 1999 Academy Award-winning documentary on the attack, One Day in September, directed by Kevin McDonald.
       Scenes in Munich suggest that Avner relays vital information to his superiors provided by French contact “Louis” about the location of three top-level Fatah officers in Beirut. Modern historical sources do not support the assumption that any Mossad agent working in the field provided such intelligence. The strike, designated operation “Spring of Youth,” is most remembered as the mission in which future Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak disguised himself as a woman to lead the attack, which is depicted in the film.
       The strikes as shown in Munich are generally accurate in their depiction. Although several men contributed to the design of the Munich attack, as stated in Munich, the head of Black September operations and a close associate of Arafat was Ali Hassan Salameh, nicknamed the “Red Prince.” Not shown in Munich was a 1973 bungled attempted assassination strike on Salameh by Israeli agents in Lillehammer, Norway which resulted in the killing of a Moroccan waiter, mistaken for Salameh. The last attempted targeting of Salameh shown in Munich, where Avner and “Steve” pursue Salameh to Spain, is completely fictitious. As noted in the film’s conclusion, Salameh was killed in Jan 1979 by a car bomb planted by Israeli agents.
       Several articles noted that Spielberg initially intended to release Munich with little to no publicity, including personal interviews. Two weeks prior to the film’s release, however, the lengthy Time magazine cover story was published, in which Spielberg described Munich as his “prayer for peace.” Immediately afterward, criticism of the film by some prominent Jewish leaders focused on Spielberg’s possible suggestion that the killings of the Israelis and the subsequent murders of the Palestinians were morally comparable. A 9 Dec 2005 NYT article quoted the Israeli consul general in Los Angeles as stating that the film’s implication that Israel’s response to the Olympic massacre had caused an escalation in terror was “pure fiction.”
       Due to the potential controversy generated by these responses, Spielberg gave a lengthy interview to LAT, which was incorporated into the paper’s 18 Dec 2005 “Calendar” feature piece. A 20 Dec 2005 DV article described the director’s attempts to screen the film for the current chief of Mossad and other agents who worked for the agency during the early 1970s. Producer Kennedy arranged a screening of the film for two widows of Israeli athletes killed in Munich. The women expressed relief that Israel’s mistaken murder in Lillehammer was not depicted and that Israel’s reputation was not dishonored. Reviews of the film were mixed, some praising its dramatic merits, and others expressing frustration with what they viewed as Spielberg’s “naïve” political message.
       Munich was selected by AFI as one of the ten Movies of the Year for 2005. The film received five Academy Award nominations, for Best Picture, Directing, Adapted Screenplay, Film Editing and Original Score. The film also received Golden Globe nominations for Spielberg for Best Director and Kushner for Best Screenplay. Spielberg was nominated by the Directors Guild for the DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Feature Film for 2005.