Rachel Weisz, Not Hilary Swank, to Play Lead Role in New Film on Holocaust Denial

'Denial' is a courtroom drama based on Deborah Lipstadt's book about her legal battle with a Holocaust denier.

Nov 9, 2015

Rachel Weisz poses for photographers at the London film festival, October 15, 2015.Credit: AP

Nov 9, 2015

Academy Award winner Rachel Weisz will replace Hilary Swank in the film adaption of Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt’s book about her legal battle with a Holocaust denier.

Weisz will play the lead role in “Denial,” a courtroom drama based on “History on Trial: My Day in Court with a Holocaust Denier,” the Hollywood Reporter reported last week.

Swank left the movie after a change in her personal schedule, Lipstadt, a professor at Emory University, told the Times of Israel.

Tom Wilkinson, a two-time Oscar nominee, will portray David Irving, a British revisionist historian who sued Lipstadt for libel after she called him a Holocaust denier in her 1993 book “Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth & Memory.” Lipstadt won the case in 2000. “History on Trial” was published in 2005.

British playwright David Hare adapted the book for the film.

Full production will begin in December on location in Poland, London and Atlanta.