Brad Pitt is developing a new movie based on Edwin Black’s New York Times bestselling book IBM and the Holocaust, which focuses on how Nazi Germany enabled themselves to murder as many as six million Jews during World War Two.

Black’s book was first released in 2001, while Pitt’s  production company Plan B have held the rights to the book since 2010, Via Plan B, Pitt initially approached HBO with an idea for a TV movie with a script by All Good Things’ Marcus Hinchey, but has now decided to focus on a theatrical release.

The book is based on the true story of how IBM’s 1933 chief executive Thomas Watson entered into a strategic alliance with the Nazis, devising a scheme through which Nazi officials could sift through data mined from years of German census results.

The results allowed Adolf Hitler’s government to identify where every Jewish person lived in Europe, begginning the process of ghettoisation that led to the Holocaust.

Pitt is shopping the project around, and sources say he has attached himself to star in the project in order to attract directors.

The 48-year-old actor starred as Lieutenant Aldo Raine, who recruits eight Jewish-American soldiers for a mission behind enemy lines, in Quentin Tarantino’s 2009 war film Inglourious Basterds.