Jordan Peele developing show about 1970s Nazi Hunters. He wants them scalps or something
Jordan Peele has announced that he’s developing a show based on real-ass Nazi Hunters in the 1970s. I’m in. I’ll just leave it there. Full stop.
The Mary Sue:
Few things in pop culture are more exciting than an announcement of a new Jordan Peele project. We throw a mini mental party every single time, and that means there’s a lot of celebrating going on because this man is busy as hell. Earlier this year, he revealed Get Out would be part of a series of thrillers about “social demons.” He’s also producing a number of projects, including Spike Lee’s Black Klansman, and he signed an overall television deal with Sonar Entertainment to develop new projects for TV and digital platforms under his Monkeypaw Productions banner. Peele is taking over Hollywood and no one here is complaining.
Now, he’s announced his first show in that TV deal. Titled The Hunt, the drama series tells the story of Nazi hunters in the 1970s. While there’s no network lined up yet, we will watch this literally anywhere. Peele will be executive producing alongside newcomer David Weil, who’s writing the script. Here are all the plot details we have so far (via The Hollywood Reporter):
“Inspired by true events, The Hunt follows a diverse band of Nazi hunters in 1970s America as they set out on a quest for revenge and justice — tracking and killing hundreds of Nazis who, with the unconscionable help of the U.S. government, escaped justice and embedded themselves in American society.”
We don’t know if the characters will be based on real people, or how closely they’ll be following those true events, but we all trust Peele to do justice to the history here. Following WWII, thousands of Nazi war criminals fled Germany to avoid prosecution, many to South America, some of whom were aided by the American government. In 1958, the West German government established the Central Office for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes to track down and prosecute them.
It’s hard to ignore the depressing timeliness of a show about stopping Nazis. The Central Office is still in active operation, finding and prosecuting war criminals to this day, so it’s not like Naziism, antisemitism, and racism ever went away. But I’m guessing audiences’ interest in seeing a “diverse band of Nazi hunters” punch some Nazis is at a modern high.