Dead Ringers Producers Talk Reviving the David Cronenberg Story for a New TV Series

Filmmaker David Cronenberg managed to reimagine an iconic property when he took the Vincent Price-starring The Fly and adapted it into his own horrific experience with a 1986 movie, and now Cronenberg’s 1988 film Dead Ringers is being reimagined as a six-episode series for Prime Video. The series was developed by Alice Birch and Rachel Weisz, which sees Weisz not just producing but also starring. Making her efforts even more impressive is she stars as twin gynecologists who aim to push the medical field to new heights in ambitious and often disturbing ways. Dead Ringers premieres on Prime Video on April 21st.

When speaking with ComicBook.com of finding the balance of honoring the Cronenberg film while also establishing a unique perspective for the concept, Birch expressed, “I think it’s both and neither. I mean, I loved the film, think it’s so iconic and brilliant and nothing like it. The first few times you’re watching it, you’re just trying to understand it, and then occasionally you’d go back and have a watch and think, ‘Okay, well what can we steal? What can we take really?’ Then maybe go back again, but I think once we’d started building our characters, our Mantle twins, it was just about following them and they took us on quite a different journey. Then you’re going through and making sure that there are little Easter eggs, and little nods, and little reference callbacks to the film. That was a lot of fun, but I wasn’t trying to banish it all. It was there, just behind us.”

A modern take on David Cronenberg’s 1988 thriller starring Jeremy Irons, Dead Ringers will feature Rachel Weisz playing the double-lead roles of Elliot and Beverly Mantle, twins who share everything: drugs, lovers, and an unapologetic desire to do whatever it takes — including pushing the boundaries of medical ethics — in an effort to challenge antiquated practices and bring women’s health care to the forefront. 

To help visually separate the differences between Beverly and Elliot, Weisz’s hair would either be up or down, but for the performer herself, these physical tweaks weren’t necessary to separate the figures, given the impressive scripts.

“It all came from the script, from Alice’s writing. On the page, the characters were just so brilliantly defined, psychologically, so complex, had so many contradictions,” Weisz confirmed. “They were so fallible and yet so brilliant in different ways that they were on the page. Then I had to go in my office and shut the door and learn the lines. I think, as an actor, it’s all from the words that you get, and then you find their center of gravity when you start to speak them. So Beverly’s just more still and reserved and Elliot’s easily bored and shifting around looking for the next burger, or whatever it is she wants to put in her mouth.”

As compared to the original film, technological effects made for a slightly easier process of having a performer act in scenes with themselves, but there were still some obstacles logistically and narratively to overcome.

“In terms of ones that were hard to film, any time that the twins were touching was just such just incredibly technical and complicated to film,” Birch confirmed of the most challenging sequences. “And then more narratively, I think, the final scene was definitely hard to write emotionally, and just, I knew that was where we were heading for a long time, but then really earning it was … I think it costs you, as well, as a maker. You want to want to earn it.” 

She added, “I love writing a dinner scene and there are lots of dinner scenes in this show, but then it turns out that those are technically very complicated to film, particularly when you’ve got twins.”

All six episodes of Dead Ringers premiere on Prime Video on April 21st.

Are you looking forward to the new series? Let us know in the comments or contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter to talk all things Star Wars and horror!