Luca Marinelli to Play Mussolini in Joe Wright’s Historic Series ‘M. Son of the Century’ (Exclusive)

Italian star Luca Marinelli (The Old Guard, Eight Mountains, Martin Eden) has signed on to play Benito Mussolini in M. Son of the Century, the new eight-part series from Atonement director Joe Wright, which traces the fascist leader’s rise to power in Italy in the early 20th century.

The series, commissioned as a Sky Original, is based on Antonio Scurati’s best-selling novel. The series will cover the time period from the founding of the Italian fascist party in 1919 through to 1925, just before Mussolini seized power in Italy, when he gave his infamous speech in parliament following the murder of socialist MP Giacomo Matteotti. Like the novel, the series aims to tell the history of a country that surrendered to dictatorship and the story of a man who was able to rise from the ashes time and time again.

Marinelli, who has just wrapped filming on the sequel to Netflix’s The Old Guard, will begin shooting on M. over the next few weeks. The series will shoot at Rome’s legendary Cinecittà Studios over the next few weeks.

“For a great project like M. and for such a challenging role as Mussolini, we could only think of an extraordinary and eclectic talent like Luca Marinelli,” said Nils Hartmann, executive vp of Sky Studios for Italy and Germany. “There are not many actors like him in Italy or in the world, and we have been courting him for a long time and are now delighted to have him in this new Sky Studios production.”

Added Antonella D’Errico, executive vp programming at Sky Italia: “We want to offer our audience a unique story with this new project [that is] not only important but necessary, from the success of Antonio Scurati’s novel, in which the great talent of a very charismatic actor like Luca Marinelli, cast in the complex role of Mussolini, and the vision of a sophisticated director like Joe Wright converge.”

M. Son of the Century is being produced by Sky Studios and Lorenzo Mieli for The Apartment Pictures, a Fremantle company, in collaboration with Pathé. In Italy the book written by Scurati is published by Bompiani.

“I am hugely happy about the artistic team we have in M.,” said Apartment Pictures CEO Mieli. “Joe Wright is perfect because I love the way he’s dealt with the complexity of the human soul and the ethical dilemmas of power in the past and I also love the way he can change genres. Luca Marinelli is definitely one of the greatest actors of his generation and only a great actor like him can play a character as complex as that of Mussolini.”

Written by Stefano Bises (Gomorrah, The New Pope) and Davide Serino (1992), the series will be broadcast exclusively on Sky and streamed on Sky NOW in all of Sky’s European markets: UK, Ireland, Italy and Germany-speaking Europe. Fremantle is handling international sales for the series.