Entertainment

Russia Is Making Its Own 'Chernobyl' Blaming America for the Whole Thing

Their version is apparently based on a conspiracy theory that says the CIA did it.
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Photo by Liam Daniel/HBO

Craig Mazin, the man behind HBO's brilliant Chernobyl miniseries, spent years making sure every piece of his story was brain-bleedingly accurate. From the casting to the props to the literal wallpaper, Mazin built a world that was a meticulous and terrifying recreation of 1980s reality. Sure, the series is a landmark piece of historical narrative filmmaking and one of HBO's greatest achievements to date, but don't put away your eggbaskets just yet, everybody—because Russia is making its own version of Chernobyl now. Except, this one is apparently going to be way less focused on the truth.

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This week, the Moscow Times reported that multiple Kremlin media outlets have been trashing the show as "a caricature" and that NTV, a state-backed TV channel, is planning its own rival movie about Chernobyl. But this one will be less about the actual story and more about, uh, how the CIA actually caused the whole thing?

Alexei Muradov, director of Russia's upcoming Chernobyl movie, told the Moscow Times that the story will be based on a conspiracy theory that "Americans had infiltrated the Chernobyl nuclear power plant" and likely had a hand in the explosion. "Many historians do not deny that, on the day of the explosion, an agent of the enemy’s intelligence services was present at the station," Muradov said, according to the Times.

Of course, Mazin's Chernobyl failed to dive into this whole thrilling subplot of dastardly American operatives snipping wires and flipping switches since, you know, that didn't actually happen. But whatever!

Per the Times:

In place of a moving tribute to the heroic men and women who sacrificed everything to overcome the fallout from the Chernobyl disaster, Moscow gives us a thrilling detective film based on a conspiracy theory in which a KGB officer struggles to thwart American spies — the new villains in this national tragedy.

The movie is reportedly already in production, but there's no word when, exactly, we'll all get to see this bizarre, JFK-style conspiracy theory flick. At least the characters won't all have weird British accents like they're all bad guys in Star Wars or whatever.