Stanley Kubrick’s classic film Dr Strangelove is to be adapted for the stage for the first time.
The 1964 apocalyptic comedy, about a rogue US general who triggers a nuclear crisis and puts the world on the verge of catastrophe when he orders an attack on the Soviet Union, will be adapted by Armando Iannucci, the writer and broadcaster known for political satires including the TV series The Thick of It and the film In the Loop, and the Olivier award-winning actor Sean Foley. Foley will also direct.
“In these sad times what better to cheer the nation up than a stage show about the end of the world,” Iannucci quipped on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Saturday.
He added: “We started talking about this adaptation several years ago, but now with the war in Ukraine and the whole nuclear question, it just hasn’t gone away.
“I think a lot of our art is less about the past and more about the future.”
Foley said: “The themes within it are perennially relevant: the climate catastrophe, the end of the world is somewhere in our consciousness all the time now.”
It is the first time Kubrick’s family have allowed his work to be adapted.
His widow, Christiane Kubrick, said: “We have always been reluctant to let anyone adapt any of Stanley’s work, and we never have. It was so important to him that it wasn’t changed from how he finished it. But we could not resist authorising this project: the time is right; the people doing it are fantastic; and Strangelove should be brought to a new and younger audience. I am sure Stanley would have approved it too.”
Katharina Kubrick, the director’s stepdaughter, said: “I am thrilled that Dr Strangelove is being adapted for the stage. The subject matter of this film is particularly relevant again in our prevailing political climate. People often laugh when they would rather cry, and this is exactly how the film, and now the play, handles the possibility of the ultimate destruction of life on earth.”
Jan Harlan, Kubrick’s longtime producer, said Dr Strangelove was originally conceived as a serious film based on the novel Red Alert by Peter George. “During the adaptation, Stanley ran into a wall: it was impossible to make a successful film about the end of mankind since nobody, himself included, would want to see it. The answer was satire. Laughing is one of our go-to responses when faced with an inescapable reality. As the film charts our short path to total self-destruction, we must make fun of it and ‘all will be well’.”
Foley acknowledged there were challenges in bringing classic movies to the stage. He said: “You have got to make it a proper piece of theatre, but you have to do the weird balance of giving people what they want if they know the original, but also for new people coming to it, it’s just a wonderful piece of work.”
The show is scheduled to open in the West End in autumn 2024.
