WME to Launch Worldwide Sales of James Vanderbilt’s ‘Nuremberg’ at Cannes

WME Independent has signed on to represent the worldwide sales rights to “Nuremberg,” a historical drama set in post-war Germany, and will be introducing the film to buyers at the Cannes Film Festival next month, the agency announced Monday.

The film stars Academy Award winner Russell Crowe, Academy Award winner Rami Malek and Academy Award nominee Michael Shannon.

Rounding out the all star cast are Academy Award nominee Richard E. Grant, Leo Woodall, John Slattery, Mark O’Brien, Colin Hanks, Lydia Peckham, Wrenn Schmidt, Lotte Verbeek and Andreas Pietschmann.

Additionally, Nick Meyer’s Sierra Pictures is consulting on the sales and distribution of the film.

James Vanderbilt, who wrote David Fincher’s “Zodiac” and the two “Murder Mystery” movies for Netflix, will write and direct. Production is currently underway in Hungary. It is based on the 2013 book “The Nazi and the Psychiatrist: Hermann Göring, Dr. Douglas M. Kelley, and a Fatal Meeting of Minds at the End of WWII” by Jack El-Hai. 

The Academy Award-winning and -nominated below-the-line department heads for the project in: DP Dariusz Wolski, production designer Eve Stewart, costume designer Bartholomew Cariss, hair and makeup head Jan Sewell, editor Tom Eagles and casting director John Papsidera.

In “Nuremberg,” Malek plays American psychiatrist Douglas Kelley, who, according to the official synopsis “is tasked with determining whether Nazi prisoners are fit to stand trial for their war crimes, and finds himself in a complex battle of wits with Hermann Göring (Crowe), Hitler’s right-hand man.”

Shannon has been tapped to play Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, the chief prosecutor of the Nuremberg trials.

Bluestone Entertainment, Walden Media and Széchenyi Funds acquired the rights to El-Hai’s book and Vanderbilt’s script and are financing the film. Richard Saperstein, William Sherak, Brad Fischer, James Vanderbilt, Istvan Major and Paul Neinstein are producing, along with Walden’s Frank Smith, Benjamin Tappan and Cher Hawrysh.

Executive producers include Annie Saperstein, Brooke Saperstein, Beau Turpin, W. Porter Payne, Jr., Géza Deme and Tamás Hajnal. The project was previously in development at Vanderbilt, Sherak and Fischer’s Mythology Entertainment.