Diane Kruger is slated to embody legendary actress Marlene Dietrich in an upcoming TV series helmed by The Golden Glove director Fatih Akin. The Swimming with Sharks actress will reunite with Golden Bear-winning director Akin after they previously worked together on 2017 film In The Fade, which won Kruger the Best Actress prize at the Cannes Film Festival.
The five-part biopic series will be based on Dietrich‘s biography Meine Mutter Marlene, translated as My Mother Marlene, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Prolific director Akin is set to adapt the book, which was written by the late German actress’ daughter Maria Riva, in what marks his first foray into television. At present, the project is reported to have a working title of Marlene.
Kruger, who is also expected to executive produce on the project, hinted that the series will aim to go further than Dietrich‘s global success as an actress and explore who she was off the silver screen. “With Fatih’s talent and ability to see inside the soul of every person, I’m certain that this won’t just be a series about the icon and worldstar Marlene Dietrich but most of all an intimate portrait of this singular woman living through an extraordinary epoch,” Kruger said in a statement.
As is expected at this early stage, details of what audiences can expect are minimal but Akin‘s emphasis on who Dietrich was beyond an icon of film lends itself to room for a well-fleshed out series. “Marlene wasn’t just a cinema icon, but a woman in exile, a German migrant to America, a resistance fighter and much more,” he said.
Born in Berlin, Dietrich was an icon with a prolific career spanning the course of several decades, from the early 1900s up until her death in 1992. Aside from curating her unapologetic signature look of top hats, tuxedos and tailored suits, multi-talented Dietrich fused her love of cabaret with a zeal for acting. In 1930, she was catapulted to stardom as cabaret performer Lola Lola in hit musical drama The Blue Angel. The film sparked a reel of success for the actress including 1932’s Shanghai Express, the 1941 drama Manpower and the 1957 mystery Witness For The Prosecution. But Dietrich was more than her on-screen success. She was far progressive for her time with her effortless defiance of normalized gender roles, making a clear stand against National Socialist Germany and a willingness to donate a portion of her salary to assisting refugees. It is evident Akin has plenty to explore in the series.
Marlene does not yet have a release date. Stay tuned at Collider for future updates.
via Collider