The specter of Watergate has loomed large over Washington, D.C. recently — great timing for a television series looking at the scandal. Bridge of Spies writer Matt Charman has partnered with George Clooney and Clooney’s Smokehouse Pictures partner Grant Heslov for Watergate, an eight-part limited series. We hear that…

UK-based Poldark and Victoria producer Mammoth Screen has acquired rights to Henry Hemming’s upcoming non-fiction book, M: Maxwell Knight, M15’s Greatest Spymaster. Returning to the world of espionage, Bridge Of Spies‘ Matt Charman is attached as lead writer to adapt the real-life story of one of the inspirations for…

EXCLUSIVE: Steven Spielberg, Matt Charman and Marc Platt, who worked together so memorably on Tom Hanks Cold War-starrer Bridge of Spies, are re-teaming for a feature project about legendary newscaster Walter Cronkite for Amblin Partners. The project will focus on Cronkite’s relationship with the Vietnam War and the…

EXCLUSIVE: Amazon is in advanced talks to come onboard Strange New Things, an event sci-fi TV series that Kevin MacDonald is directing, Matt Charman is writing and Left Bank Pictures is producing. The project is an adaptation of Michel Faber’s The Book Of Strange New Things, which was critically praised upon its…

Until very recently Matthew Charman was at home in London, successfully writing for the BBC. Then one day, a footnote in a JFK biography caught his attention, and the screenplay for Bridge Of Spies was born. A few Hollywood pitches later and Charman found himself on the phone with Steven Spielberg. Now Charman is…

EXCLUSIVE: Screenwriter Matt Charman and Hunger Games producer Nina Jacobson have closed a deal with Fox 2000 for Wilderness. The logline, which is believed to have a particularly original take and does have YA elements, is being kept closely under wraps. It is high concept enough for Fox to have moved so…

Along with its just-announced epic event series, Troy – Fall Of A City, BBC One has ordered a raft of new dramas. Talent behind the projects includes Hanif Kureshi, Matt Charman and Peter Moffatt. The adaptation of JK Rowling's secretly-penned post-Harry Potter series of detective novels is also going forward after…

EXCLUSIVE: In a move that creates a race between two major feature films about the Boston Marathon bombing and the citywide manhunt that led to the killing of one terrorist and the arrest of the other, CBS Films is fast-tracking Patriots Day. This film will tell the story based on the firsthand account of Boston…

It’s Channel 4 day here in Edinburgh. CEO David Abraham is giving the annual MacTaggart speech this evening at the Edinburgh TV Festival, and the company earlier announced it had taken minority stakes in four British indies. It’s also come forth with a quartet of commissions including North Korean political thriller Op…

Sister publication Variety reporting Tom Hanks wants to star for Steven Spielberg in an untitled thriller scripted by Matt Charman. Not sure if this will be next, as DreamWorks poured cold water on the Cold War project when Deadline inquired a couple weeks ago after hearing it might be next for Spielberg. In this one…