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Das Boot getting TV sequel

Epic 1981 movie about life aboard a WWII German U-boat is getting an 8 episode sequel.

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A sequel to classic German film Das Boot is about to begin production in Europe.

The epic 1981 Wolfgang Petersen-directed movie, which told the remarkable tale of a crews’ high-pressure and claustrophobic life aboard a WWII German U-boat is to film in August in France, Prague, Malta and Munich.

The eight-episode sequel is a Sky Original Production and co-produced by Bavaria Fernsehproduktion, Sky Deutschland and Sonar Entertainment.

It will feature an international cast including Lizzy Caplan (Masters of Sex), August Wittgenstein (The Crown), Vicky Krieps (Colonia Dignidad), Jonathan Zaccai (Robin Hood), Leonard Scheicher (Finsterworld), Robert Stadlober (Summer Storm), Franz Dinda (The Cloud) and Stefan Konarske (The Young Karl Marx).

The series will be directed by Andreas Prochaska, whose credits include Das finstere Tal (The Dark Valley) and Das Wunder von Kärnten (A Day for a Miracle).

It will premiere in Europe in 2018 and…. over to you SBS?

4 Responses

  1. Not many women on board a U Boat-and not a lot of scope for an ongoing series as the strength of the film was in the claustrophobic confines of the remarkable sub interior set-a series would be far more a conventional WW2 thing.

    1. I humbly have to disagree. When the movie (one of the best war movies ever made, by the way) ended it was Christmas Eve of 1941. The allies had not yet cracked Enigma, nor had they perfected sonar (used by the submarine destroyers), and the Yanks had only just entered the war a few weeks earlier. So there is plenty of scope for story development. Plenty of women in sailors’ families, at port and in the Nazi bureaucracy! Plus don’t forget that the U-Boat’s home base was actually in occupied France (La Rochelle to be precise, which was the last French town to be liberated), so plenty of Resistance action.

      1. Agreed that it’s one of the best war movies ever made. On the other hand, the real U-96 never operated out of La Rochelle; during the time the movie was set it actually operated out of St. Nazaire. At the end of the movie in 1941 U-96 was sunk and destroyed in its dock at La Rochelle; IRL it became a training ship in 1943 before being decomissioned at Wilhelmshaven in 1945 (and later sunk in an air raid near the end of the war).

        So for a start, any “sequel” would have to deal with the fact the original was destroyed at the end of the movie…

      2. No I see what Chuck is saying. Das Boot worked so well as a movie because it was completely (or almost completely, can’t quite remember) set within the confines of the submarine. The viewer feels like they are in the submarine along with the characters. So the viewer starts to feel confined as well and the emotions associated with that.
        A TV show is just going to be another WW2 themed show.

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