Michael Wolff’s peek inside the White House will head to the small screen in a seven-figure deal, with the author onboard as executive producer
According to the Hollywood Reporter, Wolff will remain with the project as executive producer alongside the ex-BBC chief Michael Jackson, who now runs Two Cities Television. The company’s first show is Patrick Melrose, a forthcoming drama starring Benedict Cumberbatch.
A network is yet to be attached to the project and it will be shopped around as a series imminently.
The book tells the inside story of the first chaotic year of Trump’s White House after Wolff was granted unprecedented access behind the scenes. It has become the year’s first publishing sensation, selling more than 1m copies and angering the president himself.
“Michael Wolff is a total loser who made up stories in order to sell this really boring and untruthful book,” Trump tweeted.
Wolff responded: “Not only is he helping me sell books, but he’s helping me prove the point of the book.”
The most controversial revelations in the book are attributed to Trump’s former chief strategist, Steve Bannon, who is alleged to have made derogatory comments about the Trump family as well as suggesting “treasonous” behavior.
The announcement comes months after HBO decided to cancel a project based around the 2016 election once sexual harassment allegations against writer Mark Halperin came to light. Next month also sees the premiere of Our Cartoon President, an animated series about Trump from Stephen Colbert, while an election-based series from the Zero Dark Thirty writer Mark Boal is still in the works.
The Guardian