‘Spotlight’ Writer/Director Tom McCarthy Is Making a Miniseries About Roger Ailes

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Tom McCarthy, director and co-writer of the 2015 Best Picture Oscar winner Spotlight (about the investigative journalism unit of the same name at the Boston Globe and their research into child sex abuse by Catholic Priests in and around Boston), will soon be executive producing a TV miniseries about Roger Ailes, reports the New York Times. Ailes was the founder and ex-CEO of Fox News, until he left that position due to allegations of sexual harassment, then recently reportedly went on to become… a Donald Trump campaign advisor, coaching him for his debates… until those two seemingly couldn’t tolerate each others’ excessive loveliness and apparently had a falling out.

Fittingly, the series will be produced by Jason Blum (via his company, Blumhouse Productions), who just worked on The Purge: Election Year, and who perhaps even more fittingly also produces the Creep films. (Beyond his promising-for-the-subject-matter horror movie work, he’s also produced — oh, look, again, not entirely unrelated — Nazi era-film The Reader, and Whiplash, in part an unsettling meditation on ambition and masculinity.)

Joining them in the creation of this miniseries will be Gabriel Sherman, the journalist who reported on Ailes for six years and wrote an extensive piece in New York Magazine about his declinewhich of course wasn’t nearly as extensive as his 560-page book on Ailes, The Loudest Voice in the Room. Both his reportage over the years and his book will provide the foundations for the series. Sherman, alongside his collaborator and wife, journalist Jennifer Stahl, will serve as co-executive producers.