A historical drama about the Nuremberg trials will start shooting next month, in March 2024, in Budapest, Hungary. The project has an impressive level of A-list talent attached to it:
Academy Award winners Russell Crowe and Rami Malek will be starring in the film.
The New Zealand-born actor won his Oscar in the Best Actor category in 2001, for his role in another historical piece, Gladiator. Crowe was also nominated for the same award for his roles in Insider (in 2000) and A Beautiful Mind (in 2002), thus receiving a nomination three times in a row. Meanwhile, Rami Malek won his Oscar for his portrayal of rock legend Freddie Mercury, in the 2018 biopic Bohemian Rhapsody.
Their new, joint venture will be directed by James Vanderbilt, best known for such movies as Zodiac (2007), Truth (2015), and Scream (2022).
His new film, titled Nuremberg, is based on the 2013 book The Nazi and the Psychiatrist by Jack El-Hai.
It tells the story of Hermann Göring, the President of the Reichstag and commander of the German Air Force under Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime. He was held captive in Mondorf-les-Bains, Luxembourg, awaiting adjudication for his war crimes in a series of trials after World War II that came to be known as the Nuremberg trials. Psychiatrist Douglas M. Kelley routinely visited and conducted interviews with him, something the captive Göring actually welcomed, as it relieved some of the stress of his incarceration.
However, Kelly, a major in the US Medical Corps, was not there to help him—he was trying to analyse the minds of high-ranking Nazi officials that made the evil, destructive regime run. In an article by the Scientific American about the 2013 book, Kelly is quoted to have written:
‘The near destruction of modern culture will have gone for naught if we do not draw the right conclusions about the forces that produced such chaos. We must learn the why of the Nazi success so we can take steps to prevent the recurrence of such evil.’
Crowe will be playing the part of the Nazi Göring, while Malek will be playing the American psychiatrist.
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