The HBO movie would have been based on the upcoming manuscript by media writer Gabriel Sherman who has written two cover stories for New York magazine on Ailes and Fox News, including his mammoth article “The Elephant In The Green Room” which prompted complaints from the Fox News CEO.How can the reason be true? It it were true, they wouldn't have started the project in the first place.
The news of dropping the project comes after Nikki Finke revealed that it existed, saying:
HBO appears obsessed by GOP Conservatives. There have been movies about the 2000 Bush vs Gore election standoff and Sarah Palin and most recently a TV series featuring George W Bush’s severed head. Now HBO has done a secret deal for an Untitled Roger Ailes Project....
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26 comments:
Oh but Politically incorrect is just fine? Puleeeease..
"HBO appears obsessed by GOP Conservatives."
Like teenage girls and vampires.
@Pogo. They have shows for that too.
They need their Emmanuel Goldsteins.
I'm guessing that means the Palin movie didn't do as well as they hoped?
Do people actually watch HBO ? I briefly subscribed when they were showing "Band of Brothers" but the times were inconvenient and I quickly cancelled. From what I read about them, they seem to be a version of MSNBC anyway.
"How can the reason be true? It it were true, they wouldn't have started the project in the first place."
Good point, if you assume that they are actually thinking.
However . . . .
s
"Do people actually watch HBO ?"
Dude, come on...even you can't be that thick. Curb? Boardwalk Empire? Sopranos and Entourage when it was on?
HBO has millions of subscribers.
I assume this movie would have been as objective as Fox News--not at all.
...a movie that was being executive produced by MSNBC.
Bingo.
"Executive producers" are the ones who front the money for the project. So we have MSNBC bankrolling a hit piece against their ideological arch-rival Fox News.
And HBO (Time Warner, CNN - another Fox News rival) backs away because there might be a perception of bias.
Ya think?
The CNN angle is less important than the MSNBC involvement, which really stank up the deal. If HBO did it alone, they might have gotten away with it.
Som executive needs to be fired over this one.
Som = Some
Making Roger Ailes into an evil monster was just a bridge to far for the skilled monster making Propaganda Office. apparatchiks.
And Ailes can counter attack with a popular network of his own. And he knows where the dirty laundry is hidden in the rest of the TV Broadcasting industry.
They better stick to unknowns like red neck rube Palin and sex maniac Cain. Those stories write themselves.
I can't believe they were that honest.
After all, it's not TV.
It's a CBS surrogate.
Ron Wood said...
Do people actually watch HBO ?
Dude, come on...even you can't be that thick. Curb? Boardwalk Empire? Sopranos and Entourage when it was on?
HBO has millions of subscribers.
And losing them by the dozen daily.
Then, too, there's the high probability a lot are there for the soft core porn and/or the new movies.
Be interesting to see what kind of viewership something like Sopranos really had in comparison to one of the CSI shows, for example.
I refuse to upgrade my cable pkg as the next tier has HBO.
Didn't Insty post some HBO responses after the Palin movie? $5 a month for HBO?
Bill Maher - Not Dropped
"HBO drops Roger Ailes TV movie because it "could never be seen as objective.""
Who watches movies with an expectation that they'll be "objective?" That's absurd!
HBO used to be good. It brought movies to the TV screen, and even made some. But, most recently, whenever I turn on HBO, I see Bill Mahar, who was cutting edge maybe 40 years ago. Or, George Lopez, who seems to equate swearing at conservatives to being funny. Not sure why the suits at HBO think that stale hard left comics are going to sell themselves to the majority of the country.
So, yes, if I still had HBO, I would have assumed that this "movie" was a political hit job, and canceled my subscription. But, since I no longer have HBO, I probably could have subscribed, then unsubscribed, and blamed that on the "documentary".
HBO is successful for one reason. Their original non political programming.
The Wire was perhaps the best thing ever broadcast on a television screen, Deadwood, Rome, The Sopranos, Game of Thrones (and yes even the campy True Blood) on and on the list continues. It's truly fantastic television and amazingly well produced.
All that said I dropped it recently. I could not stand the notion that I was helping to pay for the salary of Bill Maher and those producers who came up with the Sarah Palin / John McCain hit piece. I'll wait till the complete series are available on DVD or watch it on a friends HBO to go account.
Who in the heck watches HBO anymore? It's like Oprah's network.
Occupying that much real-estate inside his competitors' heads! An a public be-clownment besides.
Ailes, you magnificent bastard.
HBO does carry Dennis Miller's one-man shows. Not often enough to wash the taste of Bill Maher out of one's mouth, but still...
What separates Hollywood (and especially HBO) from the rest of us is that they can bring their masturbatory fantasies to film (e.g., Lions to Lambs, Rendition, Game Change, Newsroom, and other horribles).
Game of Thrones, Avengers, Starz channels, etc just pay the bills.
I thought it a little obvious that the HBO lawyers took a look at the script and decided that they'd rather not be sued.
If everyone dropped not just HBO but cable, Broadcasters would scramble to fill up their extra dtv channels with quality tv FOR FREE! Advertisers pay for your eyeballs, why are you paying a middleman?
In movies like this, casting is the key. I think the whole Sarah Palin movie fell to earth when Alec Baldwin refused the role of Sarah Palin. He had all the qualities that HBO saw in Sarah Palin but his salary demands were too high.... It's sad that they were unable to negotiate a deal with the California Parole Board. Charley Manson would have been just awesome as Roger Ailes.
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