Netflix is officially moving forward with the limited series reimagination of Ira Levin’s novel The Boys From Brazil, from creator Peter Morgan (The Crown), World Productions, and Orchid Pictures. As Deadline reported exclusively back in February, Jeremy Strong (Succession, Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere) will lead the cast as Yakov Liebermann.
The project will also star Daniel Brühl (Rush, Inglourious Basterds) as Von Harteneck, August Diehl (A Hidden Life, Inglourious Basterds) as Johann-Friedrich Meinhardt, and Gillian Anderson (The Crown, Sex Education) as Frieda Steiner.
Additional casting includes Shira Haas (Unorthodox, Captain America: Brave New World) as Anna Koehler and Lizzy Caplan (Masters of Sex, Fleishman is in Trouble) as Hannah Liebermann.
Filming will begin next month in the UK, Germany, Bulgaria and Spain.
Shira Haas and Lizzy Caplan
Getty/Cibelle Levi
Part historical thriller, part moral reckoning, The Boys from Brazil is a 5-part limited series (hour-long episodes) about obsession, vengeance, and the terrifying persistence of hatred. It asks: when the world chooses to forget its darkest history, who will fight to keep the memory and the justice alive?
Set across three decades from the immediate aftermath of WW2 through the political turbulence of the 1970s, the series follows Holocaust survivor and Nazi hunter Yakov Liebermann in his lifelong crusade to bring Nazi fugitives to justice, a crusade that has cost him nearly everything.
When one of his young protégées, undercover in Brazil, learns of a shocking Nazi plan, Liebermann is in a race against time to expose an unimaginable truth: Doctor Johann-Friedrich Meinhardt, a sadistic Nazi scientist he believed long dead, is alive and orchestrating a diabolical project to spark the rise of a Fourth Reich.
“Building on his extraordinary work with The Crown, Peter continues to examine the political and emotional forces which, through the 20th century, have moulded the world we live in today. That he does so via the intimate human stories within the sweep of history makes his storytelling powerfully relatable,” shared executive producer Suzanne Mackie, who founded Orchid Pictures.
Levin’s novel was adapted for the big screen in 1978 by Heywood Gould and was directed by Franklin J. Schaffner. The film, starring Laurence Olivier as Ezra Liebermann and Gregory Peck as Dr. Josef Mengele, received five Academy Award nominations. The feature also starred Steve Guttenberg, James Mason, Lilli Palmer, and Uta Hagen.
The Boys From Brazil is executive produced by Suzanne Mackie for Orchid Pictures, Simon Heath (Line of Duty, Save Me) for World Productions, and Alex Gabassi (The Crown, Black Doves), who will also direct. Additionally, The Crown alumni Oona O Beirn and Andy Stebbing are producers on the project.
