EXCLUSIVE: Next Productions, a subsidiary of sales agency The Exchange, has boarded production, financing and sales of concentration camp survival and escape drama Untold, with Oscar-winning director Aaron Schneider attached to direct.Untold is based on the autobiography I Escaped From Auschwitz by Holocaust survivor and documenter Rudi Vrba.
Next Productions and parent company The Exchange have jointly optioned feature script and book rights.Award-winning actor Alex Wolff (Pig, Old, Hereditary) is set to star as Vrba and casting is underway for other major roles, ahead of a potential early 2023 shoot.Schneider’s recent credits include Academy Award and Bafta-nominated Apple TV World War Two drama Greyhound starring Tom Hanks, while the director won the Oscar for the best live-action short in 2003 for Two Soldiers.Vrba’s memoir has been adapted by Black List screenwriters Evan Parter and Paul Hilborn in partnership with producer Ben Shields Catlin at Story in the Sky, in a development project first announced in 2020.“As storytellers, we were all blown away by Rudi’s incredible journey and we felt strongly that the story must be told,” said Next Productions president Caddy Vanasirikul.Untold will recount the true story of how Vrba, with the help of close friend, Fred Wetzler, and mentor Franz, achieved the seemingly impossible feat of becoming the first prisoners to escape from Auschwitz-Birkenau.The pair fled across 100 miles of Nazi Germany-controlled territory to bring the truth of the Final Solution to the world.
Their famous “Vrba-Wetzler Report”, a document of crimes secretly generated inside the camp, is credited with saving hundreds of thousands of lives.Next Productions was created by The Exchange in 2021 in
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