“It is just such a well-wrought, well-lit, well-made film”: Steven Spielberg’s Closest Movie to Making James Bond Inspired an Al Pacino Starring Project That Got Canceled

Steven Spielberg has had a lot of experience navigating the unchartered paths in Hollywood and going places where no one has ever been before. For the director, his entire career has been about achieving the ultimate creative expression, be it through film, television, or theater.

As such, every individual project conceived from the director’s imagination is a masterclass in creative expression. Apart from a couple of films like 1941, Steven Spielberg’s reputation as a genius behind the camera remains unparalleled and unchallenged even 60 years down the line.

Steven Spielberg’s Drama Inspires Al Pacino Series

Steven Spielberg has been the visionary creator of countless projects and ambitious films throughout the past handful of decades. As such, it is hardly possible for a show to exist that is inspired directly from one of his films without Spielberg being made aware of it. However, Al Pacino‘s Hunters erases all doubts regarding its identity.

Inspired directly by Spielberg’s 2005 historical drama, Munich, the series follows a plot similar to the film while managing to keep a few aspects of the core storyline distinctly separate from Spielberg’s version. For instance, the Logan Lerman arc that sets him on the path to joining the titular Hunters is a new addition that sets the series’s core identity separate from Munich.

Created by David Weil and developed by Amazon, the series stars Al Pacino as the head of a clandestine Nazi-hunting organization based in New York City in the late 70s.

Munich Sets Up the Premise for Al Pacino’s Hunters

From an analytical point of view, there isn’t much separating Steven Spielberg’s Munich from the Amazon original, Hunters. Superficially, both stories follow the same arc – retaliation against the injustice against Jews in the aftermath of the nightmarish Holocaust.

However, as one dives deeper into the film and the series, several moral and ethical dilemmas begin to surface that go far beyond the overarching themes of retribution and vengeance. It then leaves the viewers to contend with the cycle of violence that began with the atrocities perpetrated against the Jews and which continues to dominate their lives even decades down the line.

Some episodes in Hunters reflect its similarities with the Spielbergian drama better than others. As pointed out by the series’s production designer, Curt Beech, in a 2020 interview with Forbes:

There’s a couple sequences in Munich… there’s one where there’s a telephone call, the telephone call that [activates] a bomb. That whole sequence, the way that you understand the geography of that scene, where everyone is in relation to that building, is really important.

We wanted that clarity of geography and understanding of the building and how everything works in the bank sequence. Because we have all these different places in that building, it all had to make sense. The two different safety deposit box rooms were really important and how [our characters] get in and out of the space was major. [Munich is] just such a well-wrought, well-lit, well-made film.

The episode in question that tries to reflect the essentiality of Munich is Season 1 Episode 4 of Hunters titled The Pious Thieves. Established as one of the top-rated arcs in the Al Pacino series, the story takes direct inspiration from Steven Spielberg’s creation, although it wasn’t enough to greenlight a third season.

Hunters is available to stream on Prime Video.

Munich is available to buy/rent on Apple TV and Prime Video.