Netflix's 'Vladimir' To Star Rachel Weisz & Leo Woodall

Netflix initially revealed it had commissioned an adaptation of playwright Julia May Jonas' best-selling novel, Vladimir, in March 2025. The book, a "darkly comic thriller," was Jonas's debut novel when it arrived in February 2022, and it shot to the top of multiple bestseller lists as the story's plotting and denouement won critical acclaim in the U.S. The novel also caught the eye of Bad Sisters creator Sharon Horgan, who told Deadline at the end of 2024 that her production company was working to get a series off the ground. Three months later, Horgan's team had joined with Netflix, announcing that future Dame Rachel Weisz (The Favourite) would star as the series' lead.

Weisz's career dates back to the early 1990s, when "TV actors" and "Movie actors" were considered two distinct classes, and never the twain shall meet. Since Netflix launched the streaming wars, that distinction has fallen to the wayside, especially for women actors over a certain age, who have discovered they can headline and produce series with the kind of meaty roles that didn't exist on the big screen. Although those like Nicole Kidman and Kate Winslet found themselves suddenly balancing very full careers by doing both film and TV, Weisz was not as eager to make the leap, sticking to feature films until the one-two punch of the pandemic and the dual strikes brought things to a halt.

Since her last big screen appearance in Marvel's Black Widow in 2021, Weisz has slowly moved to TV, with her first major project where she starred and executive produced being the 2023 series Dead Ringers at Amazon's Prime Video. Now she's moving to a streaming service that actually markets its high-profile series, Netflix, with Vladimir being her first time working with the service.