Michael Wolff's 'Fire and Fury' Fiction to Be Produced as TV Series

January 17th, 2018 8:16 PM

Good news for all those anti-Trumpers out there who couldn't get enough of Michael Wolff's work of fiction, Fire and Fury. The book (novel) will be produced as a TV series according to an exclusive January 17 report in the Hollywood Reporter. Of course, it is pretty much a given that the portrayal of President Donald Trump will end up being so over the top divorced from reality that it will inadvertently end up as a comedy series where much of the audience will laugh at, not with, the producers of the show.

Here are the details provided by reporters Lesley Goldberg and Andy Lewis about a TV series that is doomed to be outdated by the time it airs:

Michael Wolff's controversial Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House is coming to television.

Endeavor Content — the financing and sales arm formed in October between sister companies William Morris Endeavor and IMG — has purchased film and television rights to the No. 1 best-selling book. The massive deal is said to be in the seven-figure range. Endeavor Content plans to adapt the book as a TV series. A network is not yet attached, as Endeavor will now begin shopping the project.

Wolff will executive produce the series, with veteran Channel 4 and BBC executive Michael Jackson — now CEO of indie producer Two Cities Television — also on board to produce.

Will Wolff also serve as fact checker? 

Fire and Fury comes to the small screen after HBO canceled a planned series based on the 2016 election in what was poised to be a Game Change sequel of sorts. The pay cabler scrapped the project after sexual harassment allegations emerged regarding source material co-author Mark Halperin, who was poised to pen the script alongside John Heilemann. That opened the door for a Trump tell-all, with demand high for Fire and Fury given Wolff’s cinematic writing and fly-on-the-wall detail.

I would like to see a scene in the Fire and Fury TV series where John Heilemann is informed that the money that would have been paid to him is instead going to Michael Wolff for his work of fantasy.

You just know that the producers of the Fire and Fury TV series won't be able to hold back in their attempt to make Trump look ridiculous which, in the end, will boomerang on the filmmakers. For example, just think how the following scene in the book will be produced in the TV series:

If he was not having his 6:30 dinner with Steve Bannon, then, more to his liking, he was in bed by that time with a cheeseburger, watching his three screens and making phone calls — the phone was his true contact point with the world — to a small group of friends, who charted his rising and falling levels of agitation through the evening and then compared notes with one another.

It is hard to believe the producers would just be happy with a single cheeseburger. The temptation for them to show a whole bunch of cheeseburgers being swallowed while watching three TV shows and calling multiple people on the phone is just too great. It's not hard to believe a similar vaudeville portrayal will permeate most of the TV series. Their Trump derangement just won't let them refrain from this.

Exit question: Will Alec Baldwin portray Donald Trump?