A stage version of 1975 film Dog Day Afternoon from the theatrical arm of Warner Bros. is headed to Broadway, with The Bear actors Jon Bernthal and Ebon Moss-Bachrach in starring roles.
Playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis adapted the film about a bank heist gone awry for the live stage, with Rupert Goold directing. Warner Bros. Theatre Ventures will open the play on Broadway in the spring of 2026.
Bernthal will play Sonny Amato and Moss-Bachrach will perform the role of Sal DeSilva. The Oscar-winning film Dog Day Afternoon was set in summer 1972 in New York City and followed one man’s desperate act with a Brooklyn bank hold up that quickly went wrong and generated national attention. In 1975, Al Pacino and John Cazale starred in Sidney Lumet’s Academy Award-winning hostage drama.
Bernthal is a veteran of 30 theatrical productions, including Martyna Majok’s Ironbound, and Rogue Machine Theatre’s production of Small Engine Repair. He currently stars alongside Ben Affleck in The Accountant 2, and alongside Rami Malek in the CIA spy thriller The Amateur.
Moss-Bachrach as a stage and screen actor has TV credits that include HBO’s Girls, Netflix’s The Punisher and Disney+’s Andor. His stage performances include the 2011 production of Chekhov’s Three Sisters, opposite Jessica Hecht, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard, and a 2015 production of John Pollono’s Lost Girls, with Piper Perabo.
Goold, who has worked mostly in live theater, is the artistic director of the Almeida Theatre, and before that was with the Royal Shakespeare Company. Adly Guirgis’ play, Between Riverside and Crazy, won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize.
