EXCLUSIVE: Aaron Sorkin’s long-gestating drama set behind the scenes of a nightly cable news show is becoming a reality. HBO has closed a deal for a pilot order to the project, which reunites The Social Network writer with the movie’s producer Scott Rudin. Both are executive producing the pilot, which will be filmed later this year. UPDATE: Word is the project’s working title is More As the Story Develops.
In his research for the show, Sorkin spent time at Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews’ MSNBC shows as well as at Fox News Channel and CNN programs, but the TV personalities he shadowed are not expected to be part of the HBO show. That includes Olbermann, who, despite Internet speculation, is not involved in the project.
Sorkin has been raking in accolades for his Social Network script and is considered a front-runner for the adapted screenplay Oscar. Meanwhile, Rudin, an Oscar winner for No Country For Old Men, is a double contender in the best picture category with The Social Network and True Grit, the latest film from the No Country duo of Ethan and Joel Coen. On Tuesday, The Social Network netted a total of 8 Academy Award nominations, including best picture, best adapted screenplay, best director (David Fincher) and best lead actor (Jesse Eisenberg).
This marks a big return to TV for Rudin, whose only previous TV effort was the 1996 ABC comedy series Clueless based on the hit movie which he produced. It also marks Sorkin’s first foray into cable. Sorkin’s three previous series all aired on broadcast networks: Sports Night on ABC and The West Wing, a 4-time best drama series Emmy winner, and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip on NBC.
Though everyone will soon be bitching again that he has already made 2 shows similiar to this concept, remember both of those shows were good. Sports Night was an amazing show. It had a stellar cast and was written amazingly. It should have been an hour long dramedy vs half hour sitcom. Studio 60 was a good show that really found it’s stride to late into the already doomed 1st season.
I am excited to see how this works on HBO and hope it gets picked up to series. Now I can’t wait until casting starts. Here’s an idea to start them off. Let’s get the underutilized Jessalyn Gilsig off of Glee and into a main role on this.
Studio 60 was awful, dude. It took Aaron’s worst tendencies and magnified them a thousandfold.
I agree that Sports Night was great, it actually was the best thing he’d done up until Social Network, with the possible exception of first two WW seasons.
Studio 60 was brilliantly written and well done. To move the focus to comedy while keeping the inherent political and social drama of the day going… beautiful.
Sorkin’s works are amazing. In their entirety. He DID leave West Wing before the show’s end — but even so, what he created and continued to oversee was beautifully done all the way through (not just the first 2 seasons).
You have good taste in shows. You’re way too critical, though (to an arrogant degree). Just give the guy credit for being one of the great television minds around right now. With all the reality show nonsense running rampant, thank him for still being around and giving us another go at something to look forward to seeing.
Awful? That is absolutely the first time I have ever heard someone mention the show that didnt love it. That show rocked.
Wow it sounds like you’re just a hater.
Awful is a bit of a stretch. It was thoroughly mediocre and poorly cast in certain key roles, but also had some great moments (the Christmas episode, the wrap party episode with Eli Wallach). It was just too serious, and 30 Rock stole the behind the scenes of a comedy show thunder from them.
You shut your mouth, you shut it right now. Studio 60 is the greatest show to ever exist.
Studio 60 was brilliant. How can you say that. It was and is FAR superior to ” 30 Rock” which was and is just awful!
Actually, I think Studio 60 had its stride right out of the gate, but got lazy in the 2nd half of the season when it became evident that the show wouldn’t be returning for a season 2 (and that’s coming from a HUUUUUGE fan of the show).
West Wing is my favorite show, but I really didn’t like Studio 60.
This is going to be fantastic – Aaron Sorkin on television is my favorite type of Aaron Sorkin, and on HBO I think he’ll be even better. And it was planned that he would do three similar shows; he’s said on multiple occasions that Sports Night, Studio 60, and this third show are meant to be a trilogy of dramedies about behind the scenes of different types of television shows. I’m already dreaming up the perfect cast – I need Bradley Whitford back on television.
Totally agree….It won’t be an Aaron Sorkin show w/o Bradley Whitford as part of the cast.
It’s good for TV that people like Rudin are going there.
I will be sitting by my TV, HBO bill paid, remote in sweaty hand.
Political porn Sorkin-style?! There is a God!
Looking forward to it. Will he go with a fake network or will he go with it being an HLN show? Will it be an opinionated show so he can do his patented Sorkin grandstanding, or will they try to be a straighter-news type show, with more subdued grandstanding?
Gee, I wonder what this is gonna be like. I wonder if there will be an all powerful news organization with mean anchors who spew lies and another news org called PMABC who gets no ratings but tells the the truth and really represents America. I wonder if there will be any Sarah Palin, Bill O’Reilly, Hannity and Glenn Beck look-a-likes who spew hatred. I also wonder if PMABC will have a boyish looking female anchor, an angry blowhard, a socialist and a tweety bird-looking anchor who gets chills at the very sight of the African American president. Please–this show is already tired and played out.
You’re right Jon. if we want a fictionalized version of the news, perhaps we should skip this. After all, it’s already available on Fox.
Sparky gets extra points for both being funny and being right.
Keith O, is that you? I love the liberal myth that Fox makes up news. The only thing that MSNBC has done successfully, is convincing weak-minded individuals that Fox is not truthful. If anything, MSNBC is the organization that doesn’t report stories, especially if they make BHO look bad in any way. I get it, Chris Matthews told you that Fox is not truthful and Mr. Maddow calls Fox, Faux News, so you eat it up. Let me guess, you drive a prius, shop at whole foods, and get a chill whenever you hear Obama tell you whatever you want to hear. You’re pathetic.
You don’t have to watch MSNBC to know that Fox is a biased version of the “news.”
Have you watched MSNBC? They criticize BHO constantly. MSNBC is ideological, but it is not partisan. FOX News is both ideological and partisan.
Not saying that either is good or bad.
MSNBC not partisan? Not. Partisan. Meaning, they don’t play favorites. They tend to treat both sides, the Left and the Right, pretty much equally? Is that your little thesis?
Are you kidding me?!
Speaking of HBO and behind the scenes journalists…..wonder what’s happening with “Tilda?” Haven’t heard much about it lately….???
there’s news on Cable? where. i guess if you count c-span, democracy now, and the daily show.
what’s the name of this show going to be – ‘Shroom With a View.’
CNN was legitimate until Ted Turner got screwed out of running his own company. FOX and MSNBC both have a small amount of legitimate news sandwiched in between biased talk shows disguised as newscasts.
Aaron Sorkin is brilliant and all of his shows are idealistic. I’m pretty sure he’ll stick with a straight newscast with anchors and producers who are passionate about journalistic integrity and are daily facing the ethical issues that come with the job of being a journalist, along with demonized network executives trying to turn the news into entertainment in order to generate more profit.
Just hazarding a guess.
Didn’t Peter Elkoff write this and sell it to Miranda Heller when she was a HBO years ago??? Confused.
The show will center around a liberal primetime host (our hero) always at odds with the network bosses (the villians) as he/she takes on the evil Sarah Palin. (super villianess)
Isn’t it obvious that only one man can come back to the network to take on the suits at Continental Corp? Casey McCall! Maybe once and a while he can swing by and do a pity spot on Dan Rydell’s radio show.
As long as he remembers the suits have an instructive ratings book back on their desk.
Except Casey McCall is now Adam Braverman on NBC.
Maybe the SN street cred will finally give Sorkin some JJ Abrams Mojo. The kind where people are lining up to throw money at him and then get out of the way.
i can’t wait for the episode when someone is writing a letter to a relative while some underdog is doing something that keeps everyone at the office. hopefully someone whose legs go all the way down to the floor.
I liked both times he did that before (or did he do it on STUDIO 60, too?).
If he does it again, he still won’t have caught up to the number of times I’ve seen a show where Mom and Dad are away and the kids throw a party. And it’ll be more entertaining, too.
How about the scene where one fo the regulars is supposed to meet someone for the first time, and it’s someone whose first name is initials, or a male name like Andy, and then when he meets him — “Wait — YOU”RE A WOMAN?!?!?” I think he used that one on West Wing a couple of times, and Sports Night maybe once.
Let’s see how many episodes until there’s a prostitute or the head writer berates and trashes the work of the lower writers on the show. Remember, Aaron, it’s not TV, it’s HBO.
Aaron could sell a guy clipping his toenails for 13 episodes he’s so hot right now. So although this seems like territory he’s covered often (the aforementioned Sports Night and Studio 60) he’s earned the right to do what he wants. I can’t really think of another writer currently writing who has had so much success in both film and TV (A Few Good Men was also a truly good movie as well as Social Network). West Wing probably the best network drama of all time (although The Sopranos is the best TV drama of all time). My one big caveat about this (besides Cable news seems dated to me) is that Sorkin tends to do best when he writes about worlds where the stakes are sky high– the presidency, a military murder, stealing a billion dollar idea. His voice tends to be too somber for lighter fare like Sports Night and Studio 60 which were both failures though they had their strengths.
Totally agree about Sorkin-friendly subject matter. Very well put. I’m not convinced the stakes for a cable news show are high enough – or that there is enough dynamism in the premise to keep things interesting – but Sorkin could prove me wrong.
Sounds good! Lets hope his first order of business is to hire Bradley Whitford!
That can be second. Right after hiring Tommy Schlamme.
Hey, maybe Josh Malina will be the real lead for once.
Ugh, no thanks. His character on Sports Night was fine, but he was the greatest casting folly in seven seasons of the West Wing. So whiny and uninteresting.
Speaking as a card carrying Republican who is to the right of even Glen Beck. I LOVE Sorkin and everything he writes. Sure his politics are absolutly insane but you cant watch the first 2 seasons of West Wing and not be blown away at his ability. Sports Night was great just not long enough, it should have been a 1 hour show but brilliant none the less. Studio 60 was VERY well written and not given the chance it deserved. Network’s need to realize that Sorkin’s work appeals to a well educated high income group who have $$$$$$$$ to spend and 1 of these viewers are worth 10 of the young demo living in their parents basement.
Ditto Ron U.
What’s the over/under on how many episodes before a woman appears in a man’s shirt, or makes reference to wearing one?
This is a big-time Sorkin fixation; SN, WW and The American President all have this element.
I must say, I’m surprised at the Sorkin bashing I’ve seen about this project. Sure, he’s done two other dramas about TV shows of different kinds and neither has scored especially well. But critically, they’ve been works of art.
Studio 60 is a fantastic 20-odd episodes with good stories throughout. It’s a long time since I saw Sports Night, but I remember thinking it was a cut above everything else on TV.
I’m not saying that everyone has to like Sorkin, but claiming he lacks originality is ridiculous in a world where CBS has three versions of the same boring crime procedural and NBC couldn’t milk Law & Order for any more if it had an industrial milking machine.
The guy likes making wordy dramas about high-profile people. What he does, which 98% of TV writers can’t, is make those shows captivating every week.