Fail Safe, 1964’s other nuclear war film, is getting a remake

Dr Strangelove
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Documentary filmmaker Joe Berlinger is reportedly going to direct a remake of nuclear war thriller Fail Safe, the 1964 film that lost out to Dr Strangelove.


Remakes are usually chosen based on brand recognition, so it’s a little surprising to wake up to the news that the 1964 nuclear war thriller Fail Safe might be getting a remake. The film will be directed by Joe Berlinger, previously better known as documentary filmmaker, though he’s also made a couple of narrative features, too, including 2019’s Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil And Vile, about the murderer Ted Bundy.

The original Fail Safe was directed by Sidney Lumet and featured a starry cast, including Henry Fonda, Walther Matthau and Fritz Weaver. It wasn’t long, though, before it became more widely remembered as the other nuclear war film released in 1964, since it was beaten to cinemas by the thematically similar Dr Strangelove, directed by Stanley Kubrick and released earlier that year.

Where Dr Strangelove took an antic, satirical approach to its end-of-the-world scenario, however, Fail Safe treated its subject with deathly seriousness. Based on the book of the same name (albeit with a hyphen in the title) by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler, it saw the US president, the military and his advisors desperately try to avert nuclear conflict. Film Stories correspondent AJ Black wrote a more in-depth comparison of Fail Safe and Dr Strangelove in 2024.

Berlinger’s film, meanwhile, is described as a remake but sounds more like a sequel. Variety reports that it’ll be shot in a “faux-cinéma vérité” style, and that it will “reimagine what the world would look like today had the events in the book really happened in 1967, with the total nuclear annihilation of New York and Moscow.”

Read more: Stanley Kubrick | Dr Strangelove and its Cold War rival, Fail Safe

Its combination of drama and documentary-style approach reminds us a little bit of 2073, documentary filmmaker Asif Kapadia’s dystopian film that, although released last year, looks more and more prescient with each passing day.

The new Fail Safe is currently in early development, so it’s a good year or two away yet at least. Here’s hoping nothing horrendous happens in the real world between now and its release.

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