Dr Strangelove stage adaptation to open in the West End

A stage adaptation of Stanley Kubrick’s iconic film Dr Strangelove is to premiere in the West End.

Armando Iannucci is to adapt the movie for the stage while Sean Foley is to direct. The production is currently scheduled for autumn 2024.

Further details – including a theatre, exact dates and casting – are to be announced.

Dr Strangelove, fully titled Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, is an apocalyptical black comedy released in 1964 about a United States Air Force general who orders a nuclear strike on the Soviet Union and the attempts to stop a nuclear winter.

“As a story, weirdly it hasn’t gone away,” Iannucci told BBC News. “It seems the right time to remind people of the mad logic behind these dangerous games that superpowers play.”

He joked: “In these sad times, what better way to cheer the nation up than a stage show about the end of the world.”

Kubrick’s widow Christiane said: “We have always been reluctant to let anyone adapt any of Stanley’s work, and we never have. It was so important to him that it wasn’t changed from how he finished it.

“But we could not resist authorising this project: the time is right; the people doing it are fantastic; and Strangelove should be brought to a new and younger audience. I am sure Stanley would have approved it too.”

For more information, visit drstrangelove.com