EXCLUSIVE: Julia Roberts is in discussions to star in and executive produce Charlotte Walsh Likes to Win, a limited series at Amazon based on the bestselling novel by Jo Piazza. The project is backed by wiip and Roberts’ Red Om Films production company, along with Amazon Studios. The series is being adapted by Jon Robin Baitz, a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist playwright who created the ABC series Brothers & Sisters and the NBC miniseries The Slap.
This is a coup for Amazon Studios. It comes after Roberts starred in the first season of Amazon’s Homecoming and continues to serve as an executive producer on that series. Roberts will be executive producing Charlotte Walsh Likes to Win alongside her Red Om compatriots Lisa Gillan and Marisa Gill, ScratchPad’s Baitz, Rebelle Media’s Laura Lewis, and wiip’s Paul Lee and Mark Roybal.
Published to acclaim last summer by Simon & Schuster, the novel has a most timely premise in this mudslinging moment, focusing on a woman who wants it all — political power, a happy marriage, and happiness—then has to decide how much she is willing to sacrifice for all that. An idealistic Charlotte Walsh leaves her job as a high-powered Silicon Valley executive to move back with her husband and three daughters to her downtrodden Pennsylvania hometown so that she can run for Senate in a midterm election that will decide the balance of power in Congress. She is initially shocked at how nasty her opponent is willing to play in the campaign, and how harshly she is judged by the media. She also sees that the strain wears heavily on her family. When a secret is uncovered by the opposition that could jeopardize her candidacy and everything she holds dear, Charlotte is forced to measure that cost against her ambition to make a difference.
Roberts, who presented Best Picture at Sunday’s Academy Awards, is repped by CAA; Baitz is repped by CAA and Manage-ment. Piazza is with ICM Partners.
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