“Hunger” co-scribe and renowned playwright Enda Walsh is reportedly set to write a screenplay based on the life of Nazi extermination camp commander Franz Stangl according to the Australian press.
Stangl was a senior assault leader for Hitler’s SS and a commander of two Nazi extermination camps who was infamous for his quick rise to power, ruthless leadership and consequent alcoholism. After the end of the war, he escaped but was eventually tracked down by Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal (an interesting reversal on Christoph Waltz’s Jew Hunter in “Inglourious Basterds”) in Brazil, extradited back to West Germany and tried for the death of around 900,000 people. He was serving a life imprisonment when he died of heart failure in 1971. Sounds like a pretty compelling story.
Walsh is only in the research process of the project and still has his adaptation of children’s book “Island Of The Aunts” and a Dusty Springfield biopic in the works according to a recent L.A. Times article (more on that in a bit).
Either way no mention of either ‘Aunts’ or ‘Springfield’ in this new article about the Nazi commander. Could that mean the Stangl story has taken precedence? Or perhaps he’s already completed one or both of the others and they’re now simply in development. This info is unknown at the moment.
Regardless, Walsh’s name is one to definitely look out for particularly after Steve McQueen’s “Hunger” and the fascinating Nazi subject matter at hand. And tangentially, if you haven’t seen this brutal, but lyrical McQueen debut — about the last six weeks of the life of the Irish republican hunger striker Bobby Sands — boasting an incredible performance by Michael Fassbender (also of “Inglourious Basterds”) and featuring a subtle ambient score by David Holmes (the ‘Ocean’s’ franchise) — walk don’t run. The Criterion Collection recently rarefied the film was well.
A screen version of Walsh’s play “The Chatroom” about a suicide chat room has also been adapted into a film by J-horror director Hideo Nakata (“Ringu”) and will see release later this year. The Japanese really do love their Internet-themed horror films.