Peacock to Stream Sky's 'The Tattoooist of Auschwitz' Adaptation

It's been nearly six years since Synchronicity Films originally announced it was optioning the rights to Heather Morris' best-selling novel The Tattooist of Auschwitz, published only a year earlier. Inspired by the real-life story of Lali and Gita Sokolov, who met while prisoners in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp during the Holocaust, Morris' tale of the true-life romance that blossomed in one of the most famous sites of the Holocaust and survived the war was the perfect prestige TV fare. However, it wasn't until 2023 that casting was announced, and in January 2024, the first images arrived.

The series, which became a joint Sky and Peacock project, took that long partially out of a desire to make the adaptation's release a global event. All3Media, which handled sales, has managed to land distributors in Morris' native New Zealand, neighboring Australia, and across most of the European continent, including Ireland, Italy, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Albania, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, Denmark, Finland, Hungary, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Norway, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Sweden.

With so many participating countries, the plan now is to drop all six episodes of the series at once, in all countries, to commemorate the day Berlin fell, May 2, 1945. While V-E Day is technically a week later (May 8, 1945), May 2 was the day Berlin fell, Italy surrendered, the famous liberation of the Wöbbelin concentration camp, and the halting of the death march from Dachau to the Austrian border, basically the beginning of the end of the war.

Here’s the full synopsis of the adaptation:

The Tattooist of Auschwitz is the story of one man, Lali, a Slovakian Jew, who, in 1942, was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, the concentration camp where over a million Jews were murdered during the Holocaust. Shortly after arrival, he was made one of the Tätowierer (tattooists), charged to ink identification numbers onto fellow prisoners’ arms. One day, he meets Gita when tattooing her prisoner number on her arm. They experience love at first sight, and so begins a courageous, unforgettable, and human story. Under constant guard from a volatile Nazi SS officer, Baretzki, Lali, and Gita became determined to keep each other alive.

Around 60 years later, Lali meets novice writer Heather Morris. Recently widowed, Lali finds the courage to tell the world his story. In recounting his story to Heather, Lali, in his 80s, faces the traumatic ghosts of his youth and relives his memories of falling in love in the most horrific of places. 

The Tattooist of Auschwitz stars Jonah Hauer-King (World on Fire) as Lali Sokolov in his younger years, Anna Próchniak (Baptiste) as Gita Furman, Harvey Keitel (Life on Mars) as the modern-day Lali Sokolov, Melanie Lynskey (Yellowjackets) as Heather Morris, and Jonas Nay (Transatlantic) as Stefan Baretzki.

Jacquelin Perske (The Cry) is the lead writer on the six-part series along with Evan Placey (Soulmates) and Gabbie Asher (Personal Affairs), and author Heather Morris consulting on the project. Director Tali Shalom-Ezer (The Psychologist) helmed all episodes, and composers Hans Zimmer (Dune) and Kara Talve (Prehistoric Planet) wrote the soundtrack. Perske and Shalom-Ezer are also credited as executive producers, alongside Claire Mundell for Synchronicity Films and Serena Thompson for Sky Studios. 

All episodes of The Tattooist of Auschwitz drop globally on Thursday, May 2, 2024.