Roger Ailes Will Be the Subject of Competing Film and TV Projects
Hollywood isn’t done with Roger Ailes.
The controversial Fox News founder, who died Thursday at 77, is the subject of several film and television projects dissecting his legacy and the sexual harassment scandal that toppled him from power.
Alex Gibney, the Oscar-winnning documentarian behind “Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief” and “Taxi to the Dark Side,” is working on an Ailes film, but he’s keeping mum about the details.
Then there’s an Annapurna Pictures project from “The Big Short” writer Charles Randolph that centers on Megyn Kelly, Gretchen Carlson and the other women at Fox News who accused Ailes of sexual harassment, with a chorus of allegations so loud that Ailes was forced to resign from Fox News. The film has yet to name a director, so it’s going to be some time before it makes it to the big screen.
Lastly, producer Jason Blum (“Get Out”) is bringing “Secure and Hold: The Last Days of Roger Ailes” to Showtime. The film draws on reporting from journalist Gabriel Sherman, who cracked most of the stories about Ailes’ stormy firing and wrote a highly critical biography of the broadcaster. He will co-write the script with Tom McCarthy, the director and writer of the Oscar-winning “Spotlight.” It could make it to the air within the next two years.
In addition to founding Fox News, Ailes served as an adviser to presidential candidates Richard Nixon and George H.W. Bush, helping to mold their media images. He also had a stint as president of NBC’s business news and talk network CNBC.
At Cannes, in a week where news of Donald Trump’s political travails have kept buyers glued to their smartphones waiting for the latest updates, Ailes’ death was slower to register. It was business as usual at the Palais, as a stream of black town cars pulled up to the afternoon premiere of “Wonderstruck.” “I had no idea Roger Ailes died,” confessed one publicist at 4 p.m. who had been too busy working on the Todd Haynes movie to check the news.
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