Netflix has acquired the WWII thriller Play Dead, with Jaume Collet-Serra directing and Sam Raimi producing. The film stars Noah Jupe and Matthias Schweighöfer, and follows a shell-shocked soldier who survives the night by pretending to be dead among Nazi troo
A Netflix addition that feels built for high stakes landed on the desk: Play Dead, a WWII thriller directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, has reportedly been acquired by the streamer.
The project is being produced by Sam Raimi, a longtime horror visionary, and it brings together a cast that includes Noah Jupe and Matthias Schweighöfer. Jupe is known from Hamnet, while Schweighöfer previously starred in Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer.
Collet-Serra already has a recent Netflix track record. His 2024 thriller Carry On—starring Taron Egerton and Jason Bateman—proved memorable, and Play Dead is being positioned as a similar kind of push-and-pull: less TSA checkpoint, more theater of war.
Netflix has also laid out the basic premise of Play Dead. The film follows a shell-shocked soldier who. after a deadly ambush wipes out his unit in the final days of World War II. must survive the night by pretending to be dead while surrounded by an enemy battalion of Nazi soldiers. The story comes from a script by Natalie Conway and Peter Stanley-Ward. The project has previously been billed as Don’t Breathe meets 1917.
If that all sounds like the kind of tension-thick war ride that can keep its audience watching breath-by-breath, the timing question still sits front and center: Play Dead does not have a release date yet, though it is expected to debut on Netflix.
A common thread ties the facts together. Collet-Serra’s Netflix success with Carry On is part of why Play Dead has the streamer’s attention now, and Raimi’s involvement points to a survival thriller with horror-level pressure—built on one desperate soldier’s single, exhausting night.
Netflix Play Dead Sam Raimi Jaume Collet-Serra Noah Jupe Matthias Schweighöfer WWII thriller Carry On Hamnet Oppenheimer