Jeremy Strong will star in Magnus von Horn’s historical escape thriller The Passenger. FilmNation Entertainment acquired the rights to the film worldwide, excluding German-speaking countries and Poland.
This will be the English language debut of Swedish-Polish director von Horn, whose previous film “The Girl with the Needle” was nominated for an Academy Award for Best International Feature Film.
Strong was nominated for an Oscar for his role as Roy Cohn in The Apprentice, won an Emmy for his performance in Succession, and won a Tony for his role in the 2024 revival of Folks. His credits include “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere,” “The Gentlemen,” “The Trial of the Chicago 7” and “Armageddon Time.” Strong will next play Facebook founder and meta chief Mark Zuckerberg in the sequel to “The Social Network,” “Social Reckoning.”
The screenplay for The Passengers, written by von Horn in collaboration with Aleko Gotschew, is based on the 1938 novel of the same name by Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz. The book was a UK Sunday Times top 10 bestseller and translated into more than 30 languages.
In “The Passenger,” respected businessman Otto Silbermann is forced to flee Berlin after the November 1938 pogrom, known as Kristallnacht or the Night of Broken Glass. According to the official plot description, the film follows Otto as he attempts to “escape with his wealth” and “drifts from train to train as his homeland becomes a cage and his identity disintegrates.”
“I’m always struck by how history repeats itself. Boschwitz wrote Passenger in 1938 as a 23-year-old refugee, but he didn’t have the luxury of hindsight, and neither does Otto Silbermann, who travels for four days across Germany in the hope that the next train, the next acquaintance, the next bank counter will get him back on track,” von Horn said in a statement. “I want to make a film about that very moment, the moment before anyone acknowledges that the world has changed. We see it everywhere now: in the headlines, at the negotiating table, in the rooms of our loved ones. We have an uncanny knack for staying put.”
“The Passenger” is produced by Port-au-Prince Films (Jan Kruger, Rosh Kodabakhs) and Lava Films (Mariusz Włodarski), with Martina Valentina Baumgartner serving as executive producer. FilmNation co-financed the film and is starting sales from Cannes.
Alice Laffillé, Vice President of Sales at FilmNation, said, “Magnus’ work on The Girl with the Needle has been remarkable. He is a true auteur filmmaker with an extraordinary ability to weave contemporary themes into historical stories, and the FilmNation team is excited to bring his English-language debut to audiences around the world.”
“We are thrilled to partner with Magnus, Jeremy Strong and Film Nation to bring this fascinating and important story to the screen, uniting international voices in a film with a truly global reach,” producers Krueger, Kodabakhsh and Włodarski said in a joint statement.
FilmNation’s projects include Sean Baker’s “Anora,” Edward Berger’s “Conclave” and Emerald Fennell’s “Promising Young Woman.” Recent TV releases include Prime Video original series The House of the Spirits and Sky’s Small Town, Big Story. FilmNation’s theatrical productions include 2024 Best Picture Tony Award winner Stereophonic, Tony Award winners Prima Facier and A Visit from the Band.
The deal for “The Passenger” was negotiated by Laffille on behalf of FilmNation Entertainment, Włodarski on behalf of Lava Films, and Krueger on behalf of Port au Prince Films.
Von Horn is repped by WME and Range Media Partners. Mr. Strong is repped by WME, Range Media Partners, Hansen, Jacobson, Teller, Newman, Warren, Richman, Rush, Culler, Gelman, Meigs & Fox.
