EXCLUSIVE: Bernie Gunther is heading to the small screen.
Apple TV+ has greenlit a long-gestating TV adaptation of the late Philip Kerr’s popular Berlin Noir books from Oscar-winning Conclave writer Peter Straughan, Doctor Who producer Bad Wolf, and Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman’s Playtone.
The untitled drama is based on Kerr’s final book Metropolis, which told the iconic detective’s origin story. Set in 1928, Metropolis follows newly-promoted police officer Gunther in the intimidating elite Berlin Murder Squad, investigating what seems to be a serial killer targeting victims on the fringes of society. Gunther’s Berlin is described as a “city of unprecedented freedom and dizzying turbulence, the Nazis a distant nightmare waiting in the wings.”
We are told Apple is kicking off with Gunther’s origin story but there is scope to adapt more Berlin Noir books via the studio’s option. Gunther was made famous by Kerr’s Berlin Noir trilogy comprising March Violets, The Pale Criminal and A German Requiem, all of which were published around the end of the Cold War in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Kerr penned a further 11 Gunther books, which sold in droves worldwide, finishing with Metropolis before he died in 2018. Metropolis was published posthumously a year later.
To say a Berlin Noir TV project has been in the works for a while is an understatement. As long ago as 2012, Deadline exclusively revealed that HBO and Playtone partners Hanks and Goetzman were in early talks to acquire the novels. We understand this adaptation spent several years in development with HBO and was also with Sky in the UK. Jane Tranter and Julie Gardner’s Bad Wolf has jumped aboard in the past couple of years as has Apple, which has an exclusive deal with Playtone after making the likes of Greyhound and Masters of the Air. Apple and Playtone are also currently working on a TV adaptation of Elliot Ackerman’s Sheepdogs.
Straughan, who previously adapted John le Carré’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, is in demand having just won a Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar for papal intrigue drama Conclave. He has been quietly working on Berlin Noir for a while and mentioned the project on the Films To Be Buried With with Brett Goldstein podcast earlier this month, which is hosted by the star of Ted Lasso, one of Apple TV+‘s biggest TV shows.
Apple TV+ is of course no stranger to successful spy and detective adaptations. Slow Horses, which is based on the Mick Herron novels and stars Gary Oldman, has been a huge hit for the streamer. See-Saw Films’ show has already birthed four seasons and will run for at least two more.
Oldman has earned plaudits and awards for his role as unkempt spymaster Jackson Lamb and attention will now inevitably turn to who might play Detective Gunther. Woody Harrelson, for one, has been quoted in the past saying he would love to fill Gunther’s shoes. We are told casting is still a little way away.
There is also precedent for the adaptation’s potential success from Babylon Berlin, one of Sky’s biggest hits that similarly follows a detective in pre-World War Two Germany. That show was recently ditched by Sky Deutschland but has lived on at U.S. streamer MHz Choice.
The untitled Gunther project will be exec produced by Tranter, Straughan, Hanks, Goetzman, Dan McCulloch and Ryan Rasmussen. Kerr’s widow, the novelist Jane Thynne, owns the copyright in the Bernie Gunther novels through their company Thynker Ltd c/o United Agents. Straughan is repped by Casarotto Ramsay & Associates and CAA.
