It was one of the most controversial psychological studies ever recorded and has already led to two feature films and a BBC reality series.
But Philip Zimbardo’s disastrous prison study is heading to the big screen yet again this year in The Stanford Prison Experiment, a film that promises to be the most authentic take on what really happened behind bars.
The experiment was relatively simple: a group of students were assigned to be either prisoners or guards in a makeshift prison. Psychology professor Zimbardo hoped to use the research to discover whether abuse in prison was related to the personality traits of the two groups.
Ultimately, the participants played along a little too well and soon the two sides were at war with guards subjecting prisoners to sadistic psychological abuse. The experiment was over within six days.
The latest retelling stars Billy Crudup as Zimbardo and Ezra Miller and Tye Sheridan as two of the prisoners. It premiered at Sundance this year to strong reviews with The Guardian’s Jordan Hoffman calling it “masterful”.
The story was previously used as inspiration for Oliver Hirschbiegel’s 2001 thriller Das Experiment which was then remade with Adrien Brody in 2010.
The Stanford Prison Experiment opens on 17 July in the US with a UK release to follow
