NBC Entertainment Chairman Bob Greenblatt said late Friday that the Hillary Clinton mini-series that has caused such a stir in the political community may not happen at all, stressing that many projects in Hollywood get announced and often do not end up getting produced.
In a statement to Deadline, Greenblatt stressed, “The Hillary Clinton movie has not been ordered to production, only a script is being written at this time.”
Like CNN’s statement on its project, Greenblatt said that the Clinton series is still in its very early stages. “It is ‘in development’, the first stage of any television series or movie, many of which never go to production,” Greenblatt explained. “Speculation, demands, and declarations pertaining to something that isn’t created or produced yet seem premature.”
The statement came just a few hours after it was confirmed that Fox Television Studios had dropped out of negotiations with the network to produce the series. Earlier Friday, the Republican National Committee also approved a resolution to shut NBC and CNN out of the GEP presidential primary debates in 2016.
CNN is working on a documentary about the former First Lady and Secretary of State. It said Friday that it hasn’t even finished taping interviews. “We encouraged all interested parties to wait until the program premieres before judgments are made about it. Unfortunately, the RNC was not willing to do that,” CNN said.
NBC has touted the Clinton series as a major announcement during the Television Critics Association Press Tour last month, an event where executives usually make announcement to divert attention from bad news (for NBC, that’s poor ratings). Greenblatt said that the four-hour series would air long before the 2016 election and would star Diane Lane. Courtney Hunt (Frozen River) was picked to write.
The entire situation has brought up memories of The Reagans, a controversial series that the GOP also rallied against in 2003. CBS eventually backed down, but its Showtime network later aired it. Greenblatt was the head of programming at Showtime at the time.
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