'Marlene': Diane Kruger & Fatih Akin Team Up Again For German TV Series About Marlene Dietrich

In 2017, “Inglorious Basterds” star Diane Kruger teamed up with German director Faith Akin for “In The Fade” to great success. Kruger won the Best Actress Award at the Cannes Film Festival that year for her portrayal of a woman out for revenge after her husband and son are killed in a racially motivated terrorist attack. The film also went to win a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film that winter.

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Now, The Hollywood Reporter reports that Akin and Kruger will team up again for a new project: “ Marlene,” a German TV biopic series about the legendary movie actress, Marlene Dietrich. Akin adapts Maria Riva‘s (Dietrich’s daughter) book “Meine Mutter Marlene” for the five-part series. Akin’s Bombero International label co-produces the series with Germany’s UFA Fiction. Kruger also executive produces the series.

Akin called the project “the greatest challenge” of his career in a press statement, but he also said he couldn’t imagine anyone but Kruger in the role of Dietrich. “No one could be better cast than her,” said Akin. “Marlene wasn’t just a cinema icon, but a woman in exile, a German migrant to America, a resistance fighter and much more. She was also a UFA artist, which is why I’m even happier that the series has found its home there.”

As for Kruger, she cannot wait to play Dietrich. “With Fatih’s talent and ability to see inside the soul of every person, I’m certain that this won’t just be a series about the icon and worldstar Marlene Dietrich but most of all an intimate portrait of this singular woman living through an extraordinary epoch,” Kruger said. “I can’t wait to get in front of Fatih’s camera again and together put Marlene Dietrich back in the spotlight.” 

Meanwhile, UFA Fiction’s Nico Hofmann and Sebastian Werninger added this statement about the show: “Marlene Dietrich is an icon of our time: in her open attitude towards sexuality, her clear [anti-war] stance in Nazi Germany, her cosmopolitan nature and in her embrace of diversity…Marlene Dietrich is [both] myth and legacy, one of the greatest German biographies that has never been told in its true complexity.”

Before “Marlene” heads into production, Akin has “Rheingold,” a biopic about German hip-hop star Giwar Hajabi on the way. As for Kruger, this year she starred in “The 355,” “Out Of The Blue,” and the upcoming “Marlowe.”

Expect “Marlene” to get a late 2023 release at the earliest.