The story of the hunt for Nazi war criminal and fugitive Adolf Eichmann is to be made into a film.

Jewish filmmaker Brett Ratner is set to direct the thriller Hunting Eichmann, which will follow the Israeli agents who successfully captured the Nazi while he was hiding in Argentina.

Eichmann, mastermind of the Nazis' Final Solution to eliminate the Jewish population, was tracked down by a team of eight Mossad agents in 1960. The following year, with the eyes of the world on the trial, an Israeli court found him guilty and he was sentenced to death and hanged.

Speaking at a ceremony to mark the 50th anniversary of the trial, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said it represented "a turning point in which the state of Israel and the Jewish people began to mete out justice to their persecutors and said: Enough! No more."

The script will be based on the bestselling 2009 account of the capture by US writer Neal Bascomb.