Quebec maple syrup heist set for Hollywood film

The massive theft of an estimated $18 million worth of maple syrup from a storage facility in Quebec last year is set to become a Hollywood movie.

Sony Pictures has announced plans to make a film based on the theft, with comic actor Jason Segel in line to star.

A regular on TV's How I Met Your Mother, American actor Segel's credits include This is 40, The Five-Year Engagement, The Muppets, Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Freaks and Geeks.

Seth Gordon, whose last movie was the hit comedy Identity Thief, will direct. Family Guy writer Chris Sheridan is slated to write the script.

The maple syrup heist, or the Great Maple Syrup Caper as it has also been dubbed, took place between 2011 and 2012. Quebec is the world's leading producer of maple syrup, with some estimates that the province produces three-quarters of the world's supply.

Thieves siphoned off the contents of 16,000 45-gallon barrels, some of which was transported to a processing and exporting facility in Kedgwick, N.B., where the theft was eventually discovered.

Police searches in Quebec, New Brunswick, Ontario and the northeastern United States led to the eventual arrest of nearly two dozen sticky-fingered thieves.

On Sept. 17, the final suspect, 42-year-old Jean-Franois Bdard, was arrested in Montreal after a year of being on the lam.

Deadline Hollywood describes the planned Hollywood movie as a comedy with dramatic overtones.