“Dog Day Afternoon,” a classic New York film about an ill-planned bank robbery in Brooklyn, has been adapted for the stage and will come to Broadway next spring.
The production will star Jon Bernthal and Ebon Moss-Bachrach, both of whom have won Emmy Awards for their work in FX’s “The Bear.” The director will be Rupert Goold, who is the artistic director of the Almeida Theater in London and who has received Tony nominations for two of his previous Broadway shows, “King Charles III” and “Ink.”
“Dog Day Afternoon” tells the story of a group of hapless criminals who rob a bank, partly because one of them (a character named Sonny, played by Al Pacino in the 1975 film and to be played by Bernthal onstage) wants money to pay for his partner’s gender-transition surgery. The robbery turns into a hostage-taking and a confrontation with law enforcement. The film, directed by Sidney Lumet, was based on a true story; it won an Academy Award for Frank Pierson’s screenplay.
The stage adaptation, a project that was previously announced in 2016, has been written by the playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 2015 for his drama “Between Riverside and Crazy,” which was produced on Broadway in 2023. Guirgis has an ear for dialogue of down-and-out New Yorkers, and has written a number of acclaimed plays about working-class characters.
Bernthal and Moss-Bachrach are best known for their work onscreen — Bernthal stars opposite Ben Affleck in “The Accountant” and “The Accountant 2,” while Moss-Bachrach’s credits include “Girls” and the upcoming movie “The Fantastic Four: First Steps.”
They will be making their Broadway debuts in this play, but both are experienced stage actors. Bernthal studied theater in Moscow, founded an upstate New York theater company, and has performed Off Broadway and at regional theaters; Moss-Bachrach began his stage career at Williamstown Theater Festival in New York and has since performed Off Broadway and in California.
The play is being produced by Warner Bros. Theater Ventures (Warner Bros. produced the movie), along with Sue Wagner, John Johnson and Patrick Catullo. The announcement on Wednesday did not specify dates or a theater.
Michael Paulson is the theater reporter for The Times.
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