Michael Shannon will star in President Garfield’s assassination series DEATH BY LIGHTNING

Michael Shannon AND Matthew Macfadyen they will be the protagonists of an upcoming series for Netflix entitled Death by lightning. The series is about the assassination of President Garfield. Shannon will play Garfield and Macfadyen will play his assassin Charles Guiteau.

The project is based on the book The fate of the Republic by Candice Millard and “will bring to life the true, stranger-than-fiction story of James Garfield, reluctant twentieth president of the United States, and his greatest admirer Charles Guiteau, the man who would come to kill him.”

Here is the description of the book:

James A. Garfield was one of the most extraordinary men ever elected president. Born into extreme poverty, he became a scholar prodigy, a Civil War hero, and a renowned and admired reformist congressman. Appointed president against his wishes, he engaged in a fierce battle with the corrupt political establishment. But four months after he took office, a deranged office-seeker tracked down Garfield and shot him in the back.

But the shot didn’t kill Garfield. The drama of what happened next is a powerful story of a nation in turmoil. The distraught assassin’s half-baked blow shattered the fragile national mood of a country recently fractured by civil war, and left the wounded president the subject of a bitter behind-the-scenes struggle for power, over his administration, over the future of the nation. and, disturbingly, for his medical care. A team of doctors administered incredibly archaic treatments, with disastrous effects. As his condition worsened, Garfield received help: Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, worked around the clock to invent a new device that could find the bullet.

The series was written by Bad education screenwriter Mike Makowsky, who created the series, and will be directed by Matt Ross (Captain Fantastic) with game of Thrones duo David Benioff AND DB Weiss executive production.

Source: deadline