Ben Affleck won a Best Picture Oscar for "Argo," in which the CIA staged a phony movie to rescue hostages from Iran.

So the World War II drama "Ghost Army," about a real secret army that went to similar lengths to fool the Nazis , sounds right up his alley.

Affleck will star in and direct the movie, which is based on the book "The Ghost Army of World War II: How One Top-Secret Unit Deceived the Enemy with Inflatable Tanks, Sound Effects, and Other Audacious Fakery"  by Rick Beyer & Elizabeth Sayles.

The script, by Nic Pizzolato ("True Detective") also drew from the Netflix documentary "The Ghost Army."

The story is set in  1944, when a secret American army created the illusion of troop strength on European battlefields to trick the Germans into deploying forces in the wrong places.

Using inflatable tanks and sound-effects records, the group staged phony convoys, phantom divisions and make-believe headquarters to fool the enemy about the strength and location of American units. The campaign is credited with saving thousands of American lives.

[Via Deadline]