14 February 2025, 12:00 by Karzal

Jeremy Strong will play a leading role in a new version of The Boys from Brazil

Netflix has signed Jeremy Strong to star in The Boys from Brazil.

Ira Levin's Nazi conspiracy novel is being adapted into a television series by Peter Morgan, who will executive produce alongside Suzanne Mackie of Orchid Pictures.

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It will be the first series for Strong (pictured) since Succession and the first for Morgan since The Crown. Strong is also in the running for the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role as Roy Cohn in The Apprentice.

Levin's novel was adapted into the successful, landmark film directed by Franklin J. Schaffner in 1978, and sources say Strong will play the role of Lieberman.

That's the famous Nazi hunter - Laurence Olivier played the role in the film - who is drawn to investigate a conspiracy presented to him by a young Nazi hunter (played by Steve Guttenberg in the original). Lieberman is highly skeptical of the young man's claims that the infamous Dr. Josef Mengele is in Paraguay and is working on a diabolical plan to restore the Third Reich through a cloning plan set up after Germany lost World War II. When the young Nazi hunter is killed, Lieberman heads to Paraguay to reveal a truth that turns out to be horrifying. Gregory Peck played Mengele in the film, which was nominated for five Oscars.

Strong as Cohn and Sebastian Stan as the young Donald Trump are both Oscar nominees for The Apprentice, a drama about the formative years of the wannabe real estate titan who comes under the tutelage of Cohn, the polarizing lawyer who was Senator Joe McCarthy's right-hand man in the communist witch hunt that created the Hollywood Blacklist.

Having just finished filming Deliver Me From Nowhere, Strong plays manager Jon Landau opposite Jeremy Allen White's Bruce Springsteen in the Scott Cooper-directed film about the existential crisis that drove Springsteen to write and record his seminal album Nebraska.

On the television front, Strong previously appeared on Showtime's Masters of Sex, TNT's Mob City and CBS's The Good Wife.

Comments (4)

BlackBiker • 14 February 2025, 12:11

Yay, another remake. Will we see something original this year?

2Translated from Dutch.

Karzal • 14 February 2025, 12:33

Not bad for the newer generation(s) - have never heard of this myself and likely I never would've if it weren't for this.

And honestly, I don't mind remakes - as long as they don't forsake what made the original source material good. I'm quite a purist in that sense, would rather see a full 1-1 adaptation than something with changes.

BlackBiker • 14 February 2025, 12:48

Haha, you're right about that. I can still remember the film well and therefore I already know the punch line. But yes, it is a film from 1978, so I can imagine that younger generations do not know it and have never read the book. The film has been on TV a lot of times, but I think not in recent years.

It is only to be hoped that the series will not be so drawn out. In principle it could be captured in one film. So they will add a few things to make it a series. And hopefully that is not unnecessary ballast...

2Translated from Dutch.