As demonstrated through five years of making The Crown – a series featuring the likes of Claire Foy, Matt Smith, Vanessa Kirby, Oliva Colman, Helena Bonham Carter, Imelda Staunton, Jonathan Pryce and many more – Peter Morgan knows how to put a stellar ensemble cast together, and it appears that he is once again utilizing that skill for his next project. The veteran writer will soon be starting production on a new adaptation of author Ira Levin’s 1976 novel The Boys From Brazil, and he has brought together some phenomenal talent to tell the dramatic story on screen.
According to Variety, Netflix is officially moving forward with Morgan’s limited series, which will have a five-episode run, and the cast that has been brought together includes Jeremy Strong, Gillian Anderson, Shira Haas, Daniel Brühl, August Diehl, and Lizzy Caplan. Anderson’s inclusion is notable, as she previously worked with the showrunner playing Margaret Thatcher in Seasons 3 and 4 of The Crown, but it’s also noteworthy that this will be the third time that Brühl and Diehl have worked together (the other two titles being Inglourious Basterds and The King’s Man).
Jeremy Strong – who has recently been working on The Social Reckoning with writer/director Aaron Sorkin – will be playing Yakov Liebermann, a Holocaust survivor who makes it his life mission to search the globe for Nazi fugitives and bring them to justice (the character inspired by the legendary work of Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal). In the decades-spanning story, a plot is uncovered that sees a scientist named Dr. Johann-Friedrich Meinhardt (August Diehl) is living in South America and working on an experiment to create biological clones of Adolf Hitler.
This marks the second time that The Boys From Brazil has been adapted, as directed Franklin J. Schaffner previously helmed a 1978 feature memorably starring Gregory Peck, James Mason, and Laurence Olivier. The series is Peter Morgan’s first project since The Crown concluded in 2023 – his filmography also including standout titles such as Frost/Nixon (based on his play of the same name), The Last King Of Scotland, The Queen, and Rush.
Filming of the new limited series will be an international affair, as production is set to begin next month and will take place in the UK, Germany, Bulgaria and Spain. Unfortunately, one bit of information we don’t presently have is a targeted release date (the earliest it could arrive for Netflix subscribers is probably late 2026).
Given all of the talent involved, one expects that this will be a very high-profile project on Netflix’s upcoming slate, so stay tuned for more updates about the project as it moves further through development and we get more news about what’s in store.