Was Jack the Ripper a Famous Artist? Oscar-Winning Director Tackles the Chilling Theory in ‘Sickert’

László Nemes, the Oscar-winning director of Son of Saul, is attached to co-write and direct Sickert, a historical thriller series set in the world of Jack the Ripper, reports THR.

The limited series is focused on influential German-British painter and visual artist Walter Sickert, suspected by some historical theorists as being the Victorian serial killer.

Adam Baroukh will co-write the series. Oscar-nominated producer Alexander Rodnyansky (Leviathan, Loveless) will produce through his AR Content production banner. Nemes will also serve as executive producer alongside Rodnyansky, Stuart Manashil, and Michael Kupisk.

“My fascination for the first modern serial killer and for the mystery of the gothic world of Victorian London dates back to my childhood,” Nemes said in a statement.

“I have the ambition to tell a story that is both epic and personal, frightening and illuminating, and to immerse today’s viewer in a universe that remains largely uncharted.”

Set in London in 1888, a city gripped by panic over Jack the Ripper’s brutal murders, Sickert follows the artist as he straddles both the world of art and high society, and that of the marginalized underclass Sickert is drawn to paint, the very people Ripper is claiming as victims. When Sickert becomes a person of interest in Scotland Yard’s murder investigation, the artist’s grip on reality begins to falter and he starts doubting his own innocence and identity.

The site reports that Nemes says he will base the style of the Sickert series on historical records as well as the real artist’s own haunting paintings of life in the ghettos of Whitechapel, where Jack the Ripper found his victims. Walter Sickert’s work is credited with influencing artists like Francis Bacon and Lucien Freud, and the artist was a key figure in avant-garde movements including the London Impressionists and the Camden Town Group.