EXCLUSIVE: Itamar Moses, a Tony Award-winning playwright and screenwriter with television credits including Showtime’s The Affair and HBO’s Boardwalk Empire, has sold Netflix the feature pitch for Stradivarius, a drama that he’ll adapt himself, sources tell Deadline.
Netflix declined to comment. But we’re told that Edward Berger, the Academy-Award winning filmmaker behind Conclave and All Quiet on the Western Front, is attached to direct, with his company Nine Hours aboard to produce. The film is set in 18th century Northern Italy, where the world’s two best violin makers battle it out to build the perfect instrument.
Highly active in theater, Moses most recently wrote the book for Dead Outlaw, which won Outstanding Musical and Outstanding Book of a Musical at the Drama Desk Awards, as well as Best Musical at the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Awards. Previously, he wrote the book for The Ally, which premiered at The Public Theater in New York and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama; the book for The Band’s Visit, for which he won the Tony for Best Book of a Musical; and the books for Fortress of Solitude and Completeness, among several others.
In television, Moses has also written for Peacock’s Brave New World, and most recently FX’s upcoming Cry Wolf starring Olivia Colman and Brie Larson. A member of the Dramatists Guild and a Usual Suspect at the New York Theatre Workshop, he holds an MFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU and has taught playwriting both there and at Yale. He is represented by UTA, Untitled, and Schreck Rose Dapello.
Breaking out with his Netflix adaptation of the seminal WWI novel All Quiet on the Western Front before going on to reteam with the streamer on Ballad of a Small Player, a darkly comic thriller starring Colin Farrell which premiered at last year’s Telluride Film Festival, Berger started production in Europe just yesterday on his next film, The Riders, an A24 drama starring Brad Pitt. He is repped by CAA, Range, and Jackoway Austen Tyerman.
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