Netflix Acquires Streaming Rights To Hitler Comedy ‘Look Who’s Back’

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Netflix has been successful at acquiring the global rights to the German hit comedy Look Who’s Back, says a report from Deadline. This movie is an adaptation of Timur Vermes’ bestseller in which Adolf Hitler wakes up in modern day Berlin, unharmed and unrepentant.

A sleeper hit and a bestseller

Netflix will be taking the global rights outside of German-speaking Europe, Benelux, Japan, Taiwan, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Beginning Apr. 9, the film will become available on the SVOD service. Look Who’s Back earned $21.9 million (€19.6 million) in general release in Germany, making it the sleeper hit of the year there.

David Wnendt, the movie’s director, adapted Vermes’ novel in a Borat-style approach in which he combined fictional scenes with hidden-camera encounters in which the actor playing Hitler, Oliver Masucci, meets everyday, average Germans on the streets of Berlin. Beta Cinema, which is responsible for the film’s world sales, negotiated the Netflix deal.

Vermes’ book hit the top spot on the New York Times bestseller list and remained at the Number 1 spot on Der Spiegel’s list for 20 weeks. About 2 million copies were sold in Germany, and it gained huge popularity and success across Europe. The book is being published in more than 40 countries.

Netflix picks foreign language movies

Mythos Film and Constantin Film produced the movie. Christoph Müller and Lars Dittrich are its producers, while Oliver Berben and Martin Moszkowicz are the executive producers. The movie imagines Hitler suddenly waking up on the site of his former bunker, which has been transformed into a residential area of Berlin, 70 years after his presumed demise. The war has ended, and his party is no more.

Hitler is not able to recognize German society as it has become very much multicultural. Despite the adverse circumstances, he gets mistaken for a brilliant comedian, and he decides to begin a new career on television.

This is the latest foreign language pick by Netflix following its Sundance pick of Babak Anvari’s Farsi-language chiller Under the Shadow and Indian director Q’s Brahman Naman. On Jan. 6, Netflix founder Reed Hastings announced that the company has expanded its services into 130 new countries, including Russia, India and the Middle East.

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