New Zealand's own Taika Waititi has announced his next role, stepping back in front of the camera in his new film Jojo Rabbit, in which he'll play... Hitler.
Well not quite. The Thor: Ragnarok director will play an imaginary friend to the protagonist, a 10-year-old boy who is desperate to join the dictator's ranks during World War II.
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The film won't be sympathetic to the real Hitler, rather portraying the imaginary creation of a boy confused by Nazi propaganda, inventing a combination of father and the führer.
Waititi told The Wrap his role is the amalgamation of "a lonely boy's best version of his hero, which is really his dad".
The Boy and What We Do in the Shadows creator reportedly wrote the original script years ago. It made the 2012 'Black List', an annual ranking of the best unproduced screenplays in Hollywood.
Producing company Foxlight describes the film as a "World War II satire about a ten-year-old boy who, ridiculed by his peers and misunderstood by his mother, can't quite figure out how to fit in.
"As the naïve young German struggles to understand his place in an increasingly Fascist regime, he resorts to an imaginary friend who can offer advice and help him cope."
Waititi is on a Hollywood hot streak at the moment, hailed as one of the major creative forces for Thor: Ragnarok which earned close to US$855 million at the worldwide box office.
Jojo Rabbit is due to start filming in late May.
Newshub.
