Stuxnet: Downton Abbey Producer to Adapt Zero Days Documentary as Drama Series

Stuxnet (Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures).

Welcome to the next global war. Deadline reports Downton Abbey producer Carnival Films is developing Stuxnet, a TV show adaptation of Alex Gibney’s documentary Zero Days. The feature premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in February, of this year.

Stuxnet (working title) will be written by Stephen Schiff. Gibney will direct, and will produce with Marc Shmuger. Nigel Marchant, David O’Donoghue, and Gareth Neame are executive producing for Carnival. Participant Media will also executive produce.

Schiff has been a writer/producer on The Americans TV series on FX, since the second season. The spy drama has already been renewed for a fifth and sixth season, after which, it will end.

According to Deadline, the first season of Stuxnet will be based the documentary film. Here is more information on Zero Days.

Written and directed by Alex Gibney (Academy Award®-winning Taxi to the Dark Side, Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief), ZERO DAYS is a documentary thriller about warfare in a world without rules – the world of cyber war. The film tells the story of Stuxnet, a self-replicating computer malware that the U.S. and Israel unleashed to destroy a key part of an Iranian nuclear facility, and which ultimately spread beyond its intended target. It’s the most comprehensive accounting to date of how a clandestine mission hatched by two allies with clashing agendas opened forever the Pandora’s Box of cyber warfare. ZERO DAYS is produced by Gibney’s Jigsaw Productions and Global Produce’s Marc Shmuger, and executive produced by Jeff Skoll and Diane Weyermann of Participant Media and Sarah Dowland.

[Excerpted from an August Showtime press release.]

Zero Days is currently available to stream on demand. The documentary film premieres on Showtime, November 19th 2016, at 9:00pm ET/PT. Watch the trailer.