Fail-Safe remake

[BluBonnet]

‘Paradise Lost’ Director Joe Berlinger to Helm Present-Day Reimagining of Cold War Thriller ‘Fail-Safe’

Joe Berlinger, the groundbreaking U.S. director known for HBO’s Emmy-winning true crime docuseries “Paradise Lost,” is set to direct a feature film that will reimagine the cold war thriller “Fail-Safe.”

The 1962 novel by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler, which was originally adapted for the big screen by Sidney Lumet, depicts a harrowing scenario in which a “fail-safe” mechanical failure jams the United States military’s chain of command and sends the country hurtling toward nuclear war with the Soviet Union.

According to a statement, Berlinger’s take on the novel will use a “faux-cinéma vérité approach” to “reimagine what the world would look like today had the events in the book really happened in 1967, with the total nuclear annihilation of New York and Moscow.” The film “will combine high-stakes international drama and classic documentary-style storytelling to reinvent the Cold War political thriller for new audiences.”

Lumet’s successful 1964 film starred Henry Fonda as a level-headed U.S. president and Walter Matthau as a trigger-happy political theorist. A TV version with Richard Dreyfuss, George Clooney and Harvey Keitel revisited the subject in 2000.

Berlinger’s contemporary reimagining of “Fail-Safe,” which is now in development, will be produced by Los Angeles-based Maria Farinha Films & Co. It’s the newly established U.S. outpost of Brazilian social impact entertainment company Maria Farinha Films, a leading Latin American studio known for its hit Globoplay Original “Aruanas.”