Ira Levin’s classic conspiracy thriller, The Boys from Brazil, is returning to the screen. In a recent interview with Variety, The Crown creator Peter Morgan quietly confirmed that his “next project” will be an adaptation of the 1976 novel, which inspired the Academy Award-nominated film of the same name starring Gregory Peck, Sir Laurence Olivier, James Mason, Rosemary Harris, and Denholm Elliott.
Morgan didn’t spill too many beans about his interpretation of the bestselling source material, other than the fact that it would maintain the book’s high body count. “There’s a really excessive amount of death,” he teased. “Oh yeah. Oh, no. I’m making sure of that.” Right now, it remains unclear whether his vision will take the form of a television series of movie. This marks the second 21st century attempt to re-adapt the book following a stalled-out feature effort from disgraced filmmaker, Brett Ratner.
“The timing couldn’t be better, with the book literally just having been reissued. We’re especially proud of its new afterword, written by real-life Nazi hunter, Dr. Efraim Zuroff of the Simon Wiesenthal Center,” Levin’s son, Nicholas, tells me over email. “We couldn’t be more excited at both the prospect of Peter remaking the film, as well as the further opportunity to reacquaint readers with my father's classic tale, alongside all the other iconic Levin novels and plays such as Rosemary’s Baby, The Stepford Wives, and Deathtrap, which Blackstone Publishing is currently reissuing.”
One of several Nazi-based conspiracy thrillers published in the 1970s (The ODESSA File and Marathon Man being other notable examples), as well as one of the earliest instances of cloning being used in popular fiction, The Boys from Brazil centers around a sinister plot hatched by sadistic Auschwitz doctor, Josef Mengele, to restore the Third Reich to its former glory. Through sheer luck, a Simon Wiesenthal-inspired Nazi hunter named Yakov Liebermann catches wind of the plan, kicking off a tense cat-and-mouse game between Holocaust survivor and Holocaust perpetrator.
Theatrically released in 1978, the movie was written by future Cocktail scribe, Heywood Gould, and directed by Planet of the Apes alum, Franklin J. Schaffner. It received a total of three Oscar nominations for Best Actor (Olivier), Best Film Editing (Robert Swink), and Best Original Score (Jerry Goldsmith).
Interestingly, a year after the movie’s big screen debut, the U.S. government set up the Office of Special Investigations to unearth, denaturalize, and deport Nazi war criminals living in America. While the real Josef Mengele was, of course, never brought to justice, Andrew Nagorski (author of The Nazi Hunters) does believe Levin’s fictional depiction of the concentration camp fugitive kept the real man looking over his shoulder until the very end.
“He did survive and never, theoretically, paid for his crimes, but it was something he felt shadowed him,” Nagorski told me last summer. “It’s interesting. The effect of myth and popular culture in that case, I would say, was maybe positive. It at least made this man realize that he had something to fear, even if that fear was largely based on an illusion.”
