I think the breakout moment for Oliver Hirshbeigel‘s original German film, Das Experiment was at its premiere at the Berlin film festival in 2001. The film would sell in multiple territories essentially confirming that Run, Lola, Run‘s Moritz Bleibtreu was a bona-fide topliner and Hirshbeigel would have a lengthy career outside the German market, but the film itself was a rare cocktail — a psychological terror trip that is even more destabilizing when you consider that the crazy events that took place on screen were the based on actual events. An English language remake was a sure thing.
A couple of years later there were competing projects and legal entanglements: Madonna’s Maverick Films had the Stanford Prison Experiment and were suing Inferno who had their own remake in the works. Flash forward to today, Christopher McQuarrie was in pre-producion with a on of actors attached for SPE, but Prison Break creator Paul Scheuring is taking on a scenery he knows all too well directing the remake this July. The film, an ensemble pic asks for about a dozen actors taking the roles of prisoners or guards. Some of that headache has been alleviated as Production Weekly reports that Elijah Wood, Adrien Brody, Cam Gigandet and Forest Whitaker are the first to join the project. The amusing question right now is: who are playing the fragile prisoners and the even more fragile prison guards?
Here is the Wikipedia entry for the 1971 experiment.