Ben Stiller to Star as Three Identical Triplets in New Series Based on Bizarre True Story

Ben Stiller has had a pretty prolific career as an actor, producer, and director — and now, he might be bringing a strange real-life story to life. According to a new report from Variety, Stiller is in talks to star in an adaptation of Three Identical Strangers, the 2018 documentary of the same name. This fictional adaptation would be presented as a limited series, which Stiller would produce and star in as three separate characters. The series would be executive produced and showrun by Party of Five and Masters of Sex‘s Amy Lippman.

idney Kimmel, John Penotti, Charlie Corwin and Marcy Ross of SK Global also executive produce along with Piers Vellacott, Dimitri Doganis, and Tim Wardle of RAW and Emmeline Yang Hankins. Mark O’Connor of SK Global, Dan Braun, and Josh Braun of Submarine would serve as co-executive producers. This would be Stiller’s first television role in years, as well as one of his biggest acting roles overall since 2017. In recent years, he has executive produced and directed projects like Severance and Escape at Dannemora.

What is Three Identical Strangers about?

Three Identical Strangers tells the story of Edward Galland, David Kellman, and Robert Shafran, three identical triplet brothers who were separated at birth and adopted by different families. The trio discovered each other by accident in 1980, and became media sensations, appearing on talk shows and films like Desperately Seeking Susan, and even opening a steakhouse restaurant together. It was eventually revealed that the triplets were deliberately separated at birth for a secret scientific study, which sought to examine “nature versus nurture” by placing each child with a family of different economic standing.

“People had tried to tell this story before; we learned of at least three attempts by major US networks, two in the ’80s and one in the ’90s,” Jeff Wardle, who directed the Three Identical Strangers movie, told CNN at the time of its release. “In each case, we spoke to people who’d been involved in those projects and they told us they got a long way through getting it ready to go … and it had been pulled at the last minute by people higher up. There was a huge amount of paranoia … people (were) telling us, ‘There’s no way you’re going to be able to make this story, you will get shut down, it will get pulled.’ As Lawrence Wright says in the film, there are loads of powerful people who want this story to be silenced, and I feel that’s true.”

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