Amid Netflix releases like Stranger Issues Season 5, the second a part of Wednesday Season 2, and No person Desires This Season 2, the streamer is hiding fascinating tasks like Loss of life by Lightning. The miniseries, government produced by Recreation of Thrones‘ inventive duo David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, stars Nick Offerman and Michael Shannon as Vice President Chester Arthur and President James Garfield in a gripping retelling of the notorious assassination.
Benioff and Weiss are backing Loss of life by Lightning as a part of their multi-production cope with Netflix. Per Netflix Tudum, the collection was directed by Matt Ross, and written and produced by Mike Makowsky. Makowsky drew inspiration from the 2011 novel by Candice Millard, Future of the Republic: A Story of Insanity, Drugs and the Homicide of a President, and mentioned the next:
“It has been the fun of a lifetime seeing this crack workforce come collectively to convey James Garfield and his cohort again from the annals of long-forgotten historical past. Six years into engaged on this venture, it is a story I nonetheless cannot consider is true — in all its wild, tragic glory — and it someway feels much more related to our world in the present day than ever earlier than. I can not watch for us to have the ability to lastly share it.”
Loss of life by Lightning contains a exceptional forged that features Shannon and Offerman alongside Matthew Macfadyen, Betty Gilpin, Bradley Whitford, Archie Fisher, Shea Whigham, Tuppence Middleton, and Kyle Soller, amongst others. The collection premieres on Netflix November 6, 2025.
What Is ‘Loss of life by Lightning’ About?
The presidential assassination thriller follows the story of Charles Guitau, considered one of Garfield’s fervent followers who then turned on the president and tried to homicide him in 1881. Sadly, whereas the injuries weren’t deadly, the workforce of medical doctors couldn’t forestall the infections, and Garfield handed away shortly thereafter. Per the official synopsis of the miniseries:
Loss of life by Lightning is a restricted drama collection that is primarily based on the epic and stranger-than-fiction true story of James Garfield, reluctant twentieth President of the US, and Charles Guiteau — a person who was not solely Garfield’s best admirer but additionally his murderer.
Makowsky additionally remarked how the novel immediately moved him, and he turned satisfied he needed to adapt it. The showrunner additionally detailed how the present, though it takes place within the late 1800s, feels “evergreen” in gentle of the present political panorama:
“I discovered it unspeakably tragic and transferring, but additionally weirdly humorous in a really darkish manner. It is a tone that I are inclined to chase within the work that I tackle, however there’s a very deeply ingrained situational absurdity to roughly all the proceedings that I used to be simply so shocked by. As quickly as I completed the ebook, I knew that I wanted to adapt it and that, in its greatest incarnation, it might communicate to folks in ways in which different interval exhibits may not.
“The theme of corruption in politics and our forms feels significantly evergreen today. The concept of civil service reform and waging a battle to wash up the grift in our authorities — that is one thing that Garfield very a lot stood on the entrance strains of in his time. In 1881, it looks like America is type of standing at a crossroads between the previous and what the way forward for this nation goes to appear to be, and it is as much as [people like Garfield] to essentially outline how America, 100 years after its inception, goes to look and how much society they are going to be.”