Twelve Angry Men (story)

The play explores the deliberations of a jury of a homicide trial, in which a dozen "men with ties and a coat" decide the fate of a teenager accused of murdering his abusive father. In the beginning, they are nearly unanimous in concluding the youth is guilty, influenced by their own background and upbringing. One man dissents, declaring him "not guilty", and he sows a seed of reasonable doubt. Eventually, he convinces the other jurors to look beyond their own personal bias and support a unanimous "not guilty" verdict. American writer Reginald Rose first wrote this work as a teleplay for the Studio One anthology television series; it aired as a live CBS Television production on 20 September 1954. He adapted the story for 12 Angry Men directed by Sidney Lumet, and then for the stage under the same title. ==Stage adaptations==

.Twelve Angry Men was first adapted to the stage from Rose's teleplay by Sherman L. Sergel for Dramatic Publishing, premiering in San Francisco in 1955. Following the film's release, the stage rights were sold, and foreign language versions were written. In 1958, Variety reported that Andre Obey's French version was a hit in Paris, while 's German version played in Munich and Frankfort with productions planned in three other German cities. Sergel's adaptation continued to be performed by amateur theaters. Reginald Rose's stage play Rose's version made its London West End debut in 1964. A 1996 production directed by Harold Pinter transferred to the West End, and it was revived again in 2013. An all-comedian version was performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2003, and an Australian production of the same was done in 2005. The play finally premiered on Broadway in 2004, produced by the Roundabout Theatre Company and starring Boyd Gaines. in 1959 Musical adaptation In June–July 2022, Theater Latté Da in Minneapolis presented a world-premiere musical adaptation based on Reginald Rose's teleplay called Twelve Angry Men: A New Musical, with a book by David Simpatico and music and lyrics by Michael Holland. Notable foreign language productions The drama has since been translated into additional languages, including Hebrew and Japanese. Nine Years Theatre in Singapore has produced a Mandarian language version twice, translated and directed by Nelson Chia, in 2013 and 2025. In 2014, Independent Theatre Pakistan performed an adaptation of this play at Alhamra Arts Council, Lahore, directed by Azeem Hamid. An Urdu adaptation by Wusatullah Khan titled Qusoorwaar premiered in Karachi, Pakistan, in 2016 directed by Sunil Shankar at the Karachi Theatre Festival. A French translation by Francis Lombrail premiered at the Théâtre Hébertot in Paris in 2017, and has been included in Hébertot's season every year since through 2025-26. ==In other media==

Films It was written again in 1957 as a feature film, 12 Angry Men, which Sidney Lumet directed, and which starred Henry Fonda. It was nominated for Academy Awards in the categories of Best Director, Best Picture, and Best Writing of Adapted Screenplay. Indian director Basu Chatterjee remade it in Hindi as Ek Ruka Hua Faisla in 1986. It was officially adapted by another Indian director Srijit Mukherji in Bengali as Shotyi Bole Shotyi Kichhu Nei. In 2007, Russian film director Nikita Mikhalkov completed 12, his remake of the film. The jury of the 64th Venice Film Festival assigned its special prize to this remake "to acknowledge the consistent brilliance of Nikita Mikhalkov's body of work". 12 Angry Lebanese is a 2009 documentary film that chronicles efforts to stage an adaptation of Twelve Angry Men with inmates inside Beirut's Roumieh Prison. In 2014, Chinese film director Xu Ang remade it as 12 Citizens. It was shown at the 2014 Rome Film Festival on October 19, 2014 and was released in China on May 15, 2015. Vaaimai (2016) is a Tamil language adaptation of Twelve Angry Men. Television 12 Angry Men was remade for television in 1997. Directed by William Friedkin, the remake stars George C. Scott, James Gandolfini, Tony Danza, William Petersen, Ossie Davis, Hume Cronyn, Courtney B. Vance, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Mykelti Williamson, Edward James Olmos, Dorian Harewood, and Jack Lemmon. In this production, the judge is a woman and four of the jurors are black, but most of the action and dialogue of the film are identical to the original. Modernizations include a prohibition on smoking in the jury room, the changing of references to income and pop culture figures, more dialogue relating to ethnicity, discussion about who else could have committed the murder if it was not the defendant, references to execution by lethal injection as opposed to the electric chair, and occasional profanity. A film version of the CBS play was shown in 1973 on the Televisión Española (TVE1) show Estudio 1, with the title '''' ("Twelve Men Without Mercy"). In 1963, the West German television channel ZDF produced a film adaptation under the title ''''. Radio In 2005, L.A. Theatre Works recorded an audio version of 12 Angry Men, directed by John de Lancie, with a cast including Dan Castellaneta, Jeffrey Donovan, Héctor Elizondo, Robert Foxworth, Kevin Kilner, Richard Kind, Armin Shimerman, Joe Spano and Steve Vinovich. ==Characters==

The cast of the 2007 Russian film adaptation, 12, directed by Nikita Michalkov: • Sergei Makovetsky – Juror No. 1 • Nikita Mikhalkov – Juror No. 2 • Sergei Garmash – Juror No. 3 • Valentin Gaft – Juror No. 4 • Alexei Petrenko – Juror No. 5 • Yuri Stoyanov – Juror No. 6 • Sergei Gazarov – Juror No. 7 • Mikhail Yefremov – Juror No. 8 • Alexey Gorbunov – Juror No. 9 • Sergei Artsibashev – Juror No. 10 • Viktor Verzhbitsky – Juror No. 11 • Roman Madyanov – Juror No. 12 • Alexander Adabashyan – Bailiff • Apti Magamayev – Chechen boy ==References==