Harvey Weinstein, the film producer and Hollywood studio executive, is to adapt a novel about the Warsaw Ghetto uprising for the big screen.

The revolt, in the spring of 1943, was the largest single act of Jewish resistance against the German army during the Second World War.

Prompted by the Nazis’ attempt to transport remaining ghetto residents to the Treblinka extermination camp, the uprising claimed the lives of about 13,000 Jews after the ghetto was burned down by SS troops.

Mr Weinstein, the co-founder of Miramax Films, explained in online magazine Deadline this week that he was inspired to direct a film based on Leon Uris’s book, Mila 18, after reading it during a childhood trip to Israel to visit his great-grandmother.

He wrote: “It’s a movie I swore I’d direct myself. I’ve already started to talk to people about it after delaying it for so many years. I am now committed.

“I guess it is personal – I lost eight great aunts and uncles to Auschwitz. Luckily for me, my grandmother and grandfather moved to America in the ‘20s while their families stayed back in Poland and Belarus.

“My great-grandmother escaped with the Zionists as did one of her sons.”

Miramax Films, founded in 1979 by Mr Weinstein and his brother Bob, is known for distributing a number of popular films, including Pulp Fiction, the English Patient and Good Will Hunting.