Get ready for a new, left-leaning HBO take on the presidential election. This one will follow yet another Game Change book from authors Mark Halperin and John Heilemann. Halperin is the same man who said this on election night: “Outside of the Civil War, World War II and including 9/11, this might be the most cataclysmic event the country’s ever seen.”
Regarding the HBO series, Halperin said of the casting, “As great as Alec Baldwin is, the idea behind this is less caricature, and more interesting dramatic portrayal that’s not a cartoonish caricature.”
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As noted by the Weekly Standard’s John Podhoretz, the 2012 HBO movie Game Change portrayed Sarah Palin as the villain and her staffers as the victims:
Needless to say, that is not how Nicolle Wallace is portrayed in Game Change, the new HBO movie based on the John Heilemann-Mark Halperin bestseller. No, indeed. Wallace is the movie’s heroine. She is the voice of reason, the increasingly alarmed witness to the evil McCain has perpetrated by foisting Palin upon the world. It is through Wallace’s interactions with the vice-presidential candidate that we see confirmed every bad thing anyone has ever said about Palin (save that she is not the mother of Trig—it steers clear of that Sullivanian filth). Wallace (played by Sarah Paulson) delivers screenwriter Danny Strong’s inadvertently hilarious Blue State zinger when, dripping with righteous scorn during a confrontation with Palin, she says with disbelief, “Yeah, you’re just like Hillary.”
In 2012, John McCain described the Game Change book as “completely biased.” NewsBusters noted that the filmmakers behind the HBO movie gave $200,000 to Democrats and nothing to Republicans.
On the new series, The Wrap reported:
The miniseries will be based on Mark Halperin and John Heilemann’s upcoming third installment of the “Game Change” series, which will be published by Penguin Press, an imprint of Penguin Random House. Halperin and Heilemann also serve as the executive producers and hosts on the Showtime political documentary series “The Circus.”
