The casting is part of the adaptation, not a disguise
STUDIOCANAL confirmed on September 3 that Hüller will play Herrndorf himself. Schrader is directing and co-wrote the screenplay with Jan Schomburg, with production scheduled to begin in early 2027.
The film is expected in German, French and Italian cinemas in 2028. STUDIOCANAL will also handle worldwide sales.
Hüller's casting makes the project harder to reduce to the usual biopic question of physical resemblance. The film is not introducing a fictionalized female counterpart to Herrndorf. Its announced protagonist is Wolfgang Herrndorf, played by Hüller.
It is not entirely unfamiliar territory for the actor. Hüller has played Hamlet on stage and has taken other roles that challenge conventional gender casting. Here, however, the performance is attached to a real writer whose own account of his final years is the reason the film exists.
Herrndorf wrote while the ending was already known
After receiving a terminal brain tumour diagnosis in 2010, Herrndorf began documenting his life online. The writing followed hospital stays, treatment, friendships, fear, periods of intense productivity and his awareness that his remaining time was limited.
The material was published as Work and Structure after his death in 2013. That origin gives Schrader a difficult adaptation problem: the source is powered by Herrndorf's language and immediate perspective rather than by a biography assembled retrospectively.
Schrader has described the work as an intimate record of being alive, emphasizing the intelligence, irony and honesty with which Herrndorf wrote about mortality. Turning that interior voice into dramatic scenes will be one of the film's defining formal choices.
The project was already moving before Hüller's name became public
Work and Structure is being produced by Janine Jackowski, Jonas Dornbach and Maren Ade through Komplizen Film, alongside STUDIOCANAL, Haut et Court and ZDF.
German funding bodies had already backed the production during the summer. Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg awarded the project €900,000, and Germany's federal film funding body FFA later committed another €600,000 in cultural production support.
Those funding announcements identified Schrader as director and Schrader and Schomburg as screenwriters months before the lead casting was formally revealed.
There is no finished image of the movie yet
Production has not started, so there is currently no footage, character still or finished key art showing Hüller as Herrndorf. The 2028 release window is also the only public timing STUDIOCANAL has provided so far.
For now, the casting is therefore the clearest statement the film has made about itself. Schrader is approaching Herrndorf through performance rather than simple visual imitation, with shooting due to begin in early 2027.
