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‘The Lives Of Others’ Play Set In UK With Knightley, Dillane, Thompson

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EXCLUSIVE: Keira Knightley (Black Doves), Stephen Dillane (Game of Thrones) and Luke Thompson (Bridgerton) will star this fall in a London stage adaptation of the Oscar-winning German movie The Lives of Others, a love story sublimely wrapped in a psychological surveillance thriller set in Stasi-controlled 1984 East Berlin.

Broadway and West End producer Sonia Friedman confirmed the news to Deadline during an exclusive interview.

Robert Icke, who was represented on Broadway this season with his blistering dramatization of Oedipus with Lesley Manville and Mark Strong, will direct the new work. He has collaborated closely with The Lives of Others film director and writer Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck on the play that will begin its world-premiere run at London’s Adelphi Theatre from October 14 through January 9, 2027.

Tickets are on sale from 9 a.m. UK time today, with 25% of seats during the limited season available for between $39-$47, which is good news considering the way West End ticket prices in some instances are beginning to resemble exorbitant prices charged on Broadway!

Sebastian Koch and Martina Gedeck in 2006’s ‘The Lives of Others’

Sony Pictures Classics/Everett

The picture won the 2007 Best International Film Oscar. Friedman says she’s been “obsessed” with the story ever since.

It’s a potent tale about a playwright, Georg Dreyman (played by Thompson), his actress-girlfriend Christa-Maria Sieland (Knightley) and Gerd Wiesler (Dillane), a master Stasi interrogator instructed to bug — every which way — the couple’s apartment. In the movie, the roles were played by Sebastian Koch, Martina Gedeck and Ulrich Mühe, respectively.

Ulrich Muhe in ‘The Lives of Others’

Friedman notes that Donnersmarck’s being “incredibly respectful” and “very much encouraging Rob and his team and me to sort of find our own voice within it.” She stresses that Donnersmarck “doesn’t want us to do a faithful screen-to-stage adaptation. He’s not remotely interested in that, and neither are we.

“What we’re interested in is taking the characters and the heart of the story and the themes, and then finding our theatrical language. And what’s exciting, is that he wants us to keep digging into the story and go as deep as we can, and take it to places that perhaps the film couldn’t just in terms of how we theatrically manifest the literal surveillance,” Friedman explains.

Knightley and Icke are friends. When he mentioned the project to her last year, she was sent a script “and she read it and within 24 hours she was in,” Friedman reports.

“It’s a remarkable role for her. And she’s not been on stage for a very long time in London,” says Friedman, noting that the last time Knightley trod the boards in London was in a revival of Lillian Hellman’s The Children’s Hour, with Ellen Burstyn, Elisabeth Moss, Carol Kane and Tobias Menzies, back in 2011 directed by Ian Rickson. It was produced, as it happens, by Friedman.

Keira Knightley

Michael Buckner/Deadline

However, the last time Knightley took a curtain call at all was when she debuted on Broadway in an adaptation of Emile Zola’s Thérèse Raquin at Studio 54 a decade ago.

The actress does seem to favour works that deal with the secretive intelligence world and injustice. For instance, films such as Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, The Imitation Game, Official Secrets and the Netflix drama Black Doves appear in her file.

Friedman jokes that when she and the show’s creatives discussed the casting of Wiesler, “you go, ‘Well, who we need is someone like Stephen Dillane. Okay, let’s ask Stephen Dillane!’ ”

The actor’s known to be, Friedman attests, “very choosy in the work he does and so it’s a personal sort of thrill to be working with him because I think he’s a genius. And Rob and I are just absolutely cock-a-hoop that he responded to the piece.”

Dillane’s probably best known for his ruthless Stannis Baratheon in Game of Thrones and for his perfectly pitched performances in Darkest Hour, The Tunnel and Sherwood. But he cut his teeth on the stage where he’s been at ease in Shakespeare, Eugene O’Neill, Ibsen and of course Stoppard, where one of his greatest triumphs was playing opposite Jennifer Ethel in The Real Thing in London. They then transferred to Broadway where both won Tony Awards.

Thompson’s known for playing Benedict in Bridgerton but knows his way on the boards having appeared at Shakespeare’s Globe three times; played the Almedia Theatre twice; and starred with James Norton, Omari Douglas and Zubin Varla in Ivo van Hove’s scorching stage adaptation of Hannah Yanagihara’s A Little Life. He was a fine Edgar opposite Ian McKellen and Sinead Cusack in King Lear, and he led the Royal Shakespeare Company’s 2024 production of Love’s Labour’s Lost in Stratford-upon-Avon.

The Lives of Others film has become a classic; one of those movies that rewards in revisiting it.

With a sense of alarm in her voice, Friedman notes that even though it’s set in the 1980s, its story of invading, actually more like penetrating, private lives is totally pertinent now that we live in a chilling age of extensive CCTV coverage of our everyday movements in public and the intrusive monitoring of our every keystroke on our electronic devices. 

“It’s become more and more powerful and resonant, and dare I even say it, relevant about surveillance,” Friedman argues.

“And how fragile our freedoms are and how easily our freedoms can be eroded without us even noticing,” she adds with concern. 

“And all the themes and the ideas within it, even though they’re very specifically set, are very universal and right now feel incredibly poignant,” Friedman observes.

The combination of surveillance and love makes for “such an unlikely love story,” Friedman says. “And the love story as in the relationship between Weisler, who’s watching them and listening, and through their love, he finds compassion. And so it’s a devastating love story. And at the heart of it, I think it’s about kindness. He finds his kindness through an unbearable situation.”

Sonia Friedman

Baz Bamigboye/Deadline

The producer behind Harry Potter and the Cursed Child and current West End smash hit Paddington: The Musical says that her connection with the material stretches back 15 years to when Donnersmarck approached the late Tom Stoppard to see if the playwright would be interested in working with him on an adaptation of the film. “Tom very quickly said, ‘This isn’t for me,’ ” but he pointed the filmmaker in Friedman’s direction.

The producer finds the film “absolutely astonishing” and has long been a fan. Also, she notes, it has been “a sort of obsession of mine to find a theatrical form for it and a theatrical life,” and the introduction through Stoppard to Donnersmarck gave her the impetus to explore the idea of bringing it to the stage.

A few years ago she approached Icke to see if he might be keen. “He’s been so busy, and he turns so many things down, but he immediately responded to the story and the material and how incredibly theatrical it is,” Friedman recalls.

The reason for choosing the Adelphi, long known as a house for musicals, is because the play is both “so epic and deeply intimate,” Friedman says, while observing that Icke and designer Hildegard Bechtler and their teams “wanted the biggest theater we could find in order to really examine how our lives are sort of surveyed from all corners.”

She says that German-born Bechtler has been “very central to this” because she’s been “a huge driving force to this happening because it’s an incredibly important film for her and I think for so many Germans, as well as cinephiles and anybody who loves great storytelling.”

Lighting design is by Jon Clark, sound design by Giles Thomas, and the acclaimed Max Richter has been charged with composing a score that’s an integral part of the plot.

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Obama Relives Tan Suit Debacle In ‘Life, Larry & Pursuit of Unhappiness’

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As Larry David‘s comedic trip through U.S. history comes to an end, he took credit for one of the nation’s more recent presidential scandals.

On Friday’s season finale of the HBO sketch comedy miniseries Life, Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness, President Barack Obama made a surprise appearance as himself in a sketch set in 2014, as David advised him to wear the now-infamous, outrage-inducing tan suit during his live press conference on military response to ISIS.

Following some banter on how the POTUS avoids stains, David accidentally spills juice on Obama’s suit jacket when he leaves the room. When the 44th president returns, the comedian recommends he wear the tan suit that Obama planned on taking it to Turin for NATO Summit, for “a daytime event, it’s outdoors, a little more casual.”

“First of all, it’s a gorgeous suit,” David declared. “And this is casual Friday!”

“It is a great suit,” admitted Obama, as David told him, “Oh boy, oh boy. I think this is the move. … Old lips won’t let you down. You’ll thank me!”

As Obama models the look, David gives him his signature, “Pretty good! Pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty good.”

“You sure about this?” asks Obama, as David assures him, “Never been more sure about anything in my life. People are going to be talking about this for a long, long time.”

Obama’s cameo in the finale comes as David marks the United States Semiquencentennial with the seven-part sketch comedy limited series, which recounts major events in U.S. history through the comedian’s signature observational humor.

David’s longtime Curb Your Enthusiasm partner Jeff Schaffer, who serves as an executive producer on Life, Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness, previously told Deadline that Obama, who produced under his Higher Ground banner, reached out to his buddy David to ask if he’d be interested in making the show to celebrate the country’s 250th birthday.

“When you’re doing a show about American history, you want to do it warts and right now we have this orange saggy wart that we wish would go away,” said Schaffer. “But the nice thing about having President Obama produce this and be a part of it is that this country’s had a lot of fuck ups, we’ve seemed to have learned very little, but we’re still moving forward sometimes, and then we move back a little bit, but we always move forward again. While Larry’s pointing out a lot of the steps back, the President is telling us we can still step forward.”

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Matthew McConaughey Performs “Quill” From ‘Rivals of Amziah King’ — Watch

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Matthew McConaughey shows off his vocal skills (and some hidden banjo talents) with his latest role in The Rivals of Amziah King.

On Friday, Lakeshore Records released the single and music video for “Quill” from the original motion picture soundtrack, performed by the Oscar-winning and co-star Ben Hardesty, also featuring Miranda Zickler, Angelina LookingGlass and Andrea Pister.

Set in the backwoods of Oklahoma, The Rivals of Amziah King follows the musically gifted Amaziah King (McConaughey) and his bluegrass-playing band of misfits while overseeing the premier honey-making operation in town. When Amaziah’s estranged foster daughter unexpectedly returns, he leaps at the chance to reconnect and create a family business. But the honey game is ruthless, and Amaziah’s rivals threaten to destroy everything he has built.

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Premiering Aug. 14 in theaters, the Andrew Patterson-written-and-directed drama also stars Angelina LookingGlass, Cole Sprouse, Jake Horowitz, Tony Revolori and Kurt Russell.

Producers are David Heyman, Teddy Schwarzman, Jeffrey Clifford, Michael Heimler, James Montague and Will Greenfield.

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Jane Schoenbrun On Tackling “Toxic Soup” Of Slasher Genre In ‘Camp Miasma’

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With their latest directorial outing, Jane Schoenbrun used subtle pieces of nostalgia to deconstruct the slasher genre.

The Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma writer/director explained to Deadline that they wanted to create “a mindset where you can really enjoy something scary,” noting the frequent symbolism of candy and junk food as providing an atmosphere “that’s actually safe” while diving into a horror movie or exploring sexuality after trauma.

“There is this idea that if it gets too real, you can turn it off, that you’re exploring something dangerous, doing it in a way that’s actually safe,” said Schoenbrun, who is non-binary. “Which in my experience of coming into my sexual identity post-transition, kind of required some gummy candy on hand. What I mean by that is, even if we’re going to be exploring scary and vulnerable and potentially embarrassing, triggering parts of ourselves, we trust each other well enough to know that at any moment, we can be like, ‘Let’s stop, we gotta just eat some fucking gummies.’”

In Schoenbrun’s latest film, Hannah Einbinder stars as queer director Kris, who is tapped to helm a new installment of the long-running Camp Miasma horror franchise. While courting Billy Presley (Gillian Anderson), the actress who played the “final girl” in the original film, to reprise her role, the pair spirals into a psychosexual frenzy as the slasher’s killer, Little Death (Jack Haven), comes to life.

Acknowledging the problematic trans representation of horror films like Psycho (1960), Sleepaway Camp (1983), The Silence of the Lambs (1991) and Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation (1995), Schoenbrun admitted the genre has been “catnip to me since I was 10 years old,” and they jumped at the chance to direct their own.

Jane Schoenbrun at the
Jane Schoenbrun attends the ‘Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma’ premiere on Aug. 5, 2026 in New York City.

“So many slashers do have this sense of humor, and even if they’re not overtly meta like the Scream movies are, they’re so aware of their own tropes and the sort of rituals … And I just loved that from a young age and loved all of the little rituals within it, and so, getting to make my own is just like play and joy,” they explained.

“But it also felt like the perfect way to talk about sex and to talk about my experience as a trans person post-transition, learning how to come into a sexual identity that I could feel comfortable within, because so many of these movies are obviously deeply engaged in gender and sexual roles, and these movies have so much to say for better or for worse about deviants,” said Schoenbrun. “It is there in the DNA of the slasher genre that these movies are talking about fear and desire, gender and sexuality, normativity and deviance. And that’s all swimming in the toxic soup of the genre, so I wanted to remake it in my own language.”

Read on about Jane Schoenbrun’s love letter to the slasher genre with Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, now playing in theaters.

DEADLINE: It was really fun to see the slasher genre through your eyes. Tell me about finding inspiration in that genre and “final girls.” 

JANE SCHOENBRUN: I mean, it was the easiest thing in the world because it’s just one of those genres that has been catnip to me since I was 10 years old. I just raided the horror section of the video store as a kid from an age when I really shouldn’t have been doing that, like in 5th grade, I watched in the span of about one week, every Nightmare on Elm Street movie. I think that I was always drawn to movies and really anything entertainment where it felt forbidden in some way, like the thing on the tape, how is that even allowed? And that’s the thing that I love about a lot of my favorite slashers. Don’t get me wrong, I love like brutal ones, like I love Texas Chainsaw, that’s a nasty movie at its core, and that’s what’s so special about it. But so many slashers do have this sense of humor, and even if they’re not overtly meta like the Scream movies are, they’re so aware of their own tropes and the sort of rituals of, OK, what’s the most outrageous way that like these like dumb kids can get killed? But watching it, it’s not about fear a lot of the time, it’s about joy and celebration. And I just loved that from a young age and loved all of the little rituals within it, and so, getting to make my own is just like play and joy. But it also felt like the perfect way to talk about sex and to talk about my experience as a trans person post-transition, learning how to come into a sexual identity that I could feel comfortable within, because so many of these movies are obviously deeply engaged in gender and sexual roles, and these movies have so much to say for better or for worse about deviants, whether that be Norman Bates or Buffalo Bill or Sleepway Camp or Jason, Michael Myers, Leatherface in drag. It is there in the DNA of the slasher genre that these movies are talking about fear and desire, gender and sexuality, normativity and deviance. And that’s all swimming in the toxic soup of the genre, so I wanted to remake it in my own language. 

‘Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma’ (2026)

DEADLINE: I’m curious about the symbolism of all the processed junk food and the chandelier of wrappers.

SCHOENBRUN: The junk food in the movie, I forget when it found its way in there. It’s like so much of the movie is about, like I said, ritual, about being in a mindset where you can really enjoy something scary, whether that be Kris [Hannah Einbinder] in bed, with, you know, with Raisinets and the popcorn, watching a schlocky horror movie, or the two characters learning how to be present and enjoy sex after a lot of trauma. There is this idea that if it gets too real, you can turn it off, that you’re exploring something dangerous, doing it in a way that’s actually safe. Which in my experience of coming into my sexual identity post-transition, kind of required some gummy candy on hand. What I mean by that is, even if we’re going to be exploring scary and vulnerable and potentially embarrassing, triggering parts of ourselves, we trust each other well enough to know that at any moment, we can be like, “Let’s stop, we gotta just eat some fucking gummies.”

DEADLINE: And one thing I really love—I just feel like it’s a theme in your work—is how it depicts the way media and entertainment influence us. Why does that inspire you? 

SCHOENBRUN: I think it comes from a fascination and sensitivity to the complex relationship between what we think of as fiction and what we think of as reality, which we tend to, as a society, think of as pointing in one direction. Like, reality dictates fiction, not vice-versa, but when you actually look at the way the world works, it’s like one echoes off the other. And I think a complicated, sometimes terrifying and sometimes beautiful way, where the fiction, the cultural norms, the things we grow up looking at on our screens, the roles that we’re told people play, they kind of inspire us to create reality. There’s something liberating when you start thinking in that way. I think it’s a way of thinking that we as a culture, could do a lot more of. To think about the idea of fiction inspiring reality just as much as reality is inspiring fiction, is a potential path to liberating us from this hellscape that they’re telling us is the only way the world can be. 

Gillian Anderson in ‘Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma’ (2026)

DEADLINE: And I know you have the Secretary reading. Tell me what it’s been like prepping for that and why you all chose that movie. 

SCHOENBRUN: I mean, that was such a huge influence on on Miasma. There just aren’t that many fun and funny movies about deviant sex. And just the way that movie is like feather light while talking about really raw and taboo things, it is just really inspiring to me. And the dynamic between those two main characters is definitely one that had a lot of influence on on Kris and Billy’s [Gillian Anderson] relationship in Miasma. And it’s already to me a very queer movie in its way, but having Gillian reading the James Spader part and Hannah reading the Maggie Gyllenhaal part, I think it’s just gonna be like a very unique joy. Honestly, we’ve been prepping a little bit, but I think it’s just gonna be about getting up there and feeling the chemistry of it all, and just letting these folks who we have all gotten to know each other really, really well, but we haven’t actually done anything wacky and creative like that in a while, like as a reunion, it’s gonna be a real blast, I think.

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