When you become a fan of Jordan Peele, you take on a debit. The Get Out writer/director is aiming his sights on the real-life story of private agents who tracked down Nazis in the 1970s who had folded themselves into regular society, most typically in South America. That’s right. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Peele is making a TV show about killin’ Nazis.
Though there’s currently no network attached to the project, I will sign up for whatever streaming service of mobile app or time-telling website decides to air The Hunt. Not only has Peele proven himself as a deft dramatist with a keen ear for relevant social satire, hunting down Nazis falls sadly into that “relevant” category once again, and this project is practically bursting with opportunities for great drama that hits tearfully close to home. For even more social currency and biographical cache, Peele is also a producer on Spike Lee’s KKK infiltration movie Black Klansman.
The Hunt is inspired by real events, which makes it unlikely to feature the real figures behind the movement, of which Simon Wiesenthal is probably the most famous. Wiesenthal and others helped track down the whereabouts of former Nazis as well as information and records that could be used in lawsuits and criminal trials. Peele’s TV drama positions itself as featuring a diverse crew hunting down the swastika-wearing mass murderers, and if it sticks to history, that crew’s diversity could be defined by Jewish Holocaust survivors, Polish concentration camp escapees, French resistance journalists, Israeli police detectives, and American historians.
Of course, there’s no reason Peele and writer David Weil are bound strictly to the real people who were most active in the Nazi hunting movement. If Quentin Tarantino can fill Hitler’s face with a thousand machine gun rounds in a burning theater, Peele can go a little crazy, too. I imagine a lot of us will be right there with him. Jordan Peele wants his scalps.
Image/GIF Credit: Comedy Central
