EXCLUSIVE: Avenger is a podcast that tells the story of Miriam Lewin, who at 19 years old was kidnapped off the streets of Buenos Aires for her political activism and imprisoned in a concentration camp during Argentina’s military junta in the 1970s/80s.
The podcast, which was directed by Fisher Stevens and starred The Handmaid’s Tale’s Alexis Bledel as the voice of Lewin, is now set for a feature film adaptation.
The film version is being written and directed by Natalia Beristáin, who has helmed episodes of Apple’s Midnight Family and The Mosquito Coast and Netflix’s The Gringo Hunters.
As one of the few to survive, Lewin later became an acclaimed journalist and pursued justice against her tormentors, investigating and exposing those responsible for the notorious “death flights” where live prisoners were thrown from planes into the sea. She was profiled on 60 Minutes in March.
The podcast was part of a deal that Stevens, who directed The Cove documentary and starred in HBO’s Succession, and his investigative journalist partners Steve Fishman and Dax-Devlon Ross, who run Orbit Media, did with podcast company Sonoro in 2022.
Orbit Media’s Steve Fishman is producing the adaptation with Stevens, who also runs Highly Flammable with Zak Kilberg, and former Blumhouse TV exec Marci Wiseman, who previously adapted podcasts such as There’s Something About Pam and The Horror of Dolores Roach into TV series.
Beristáin is repped by Entertainment 360 and attorney Matthew Wallerstein at HWHM+F. Orbit, Stevens & Highly Flammable are repped by WME.
