“Mr. Robot” creator Sam Esmail and actress Julia Roberts, following their teaming on “Homecoming,” are coming back together for another project that’s based on a podcast.
UCP’s “Gaslit” will be a TV series remake of Slate’s Watergate audio series “Slow Burn” – a modern take on Watergate that focuses on the untold stories and forgotten characters of the scandal, from Nixon’s bumbling subordinates, to the deranged zealots aiding and abetting their crimes, to the tragic whistleblowers who would eventually bring the whole enterprise crashing down.
Roberts will play Martha Mitchell, a celebrity Arkansan socialite and the loyal wife of Richard Nixon’s Attorney General and most trusted advisor John Mitchell (Penn). She’s the first person to publicly sound the alarm on Nixon’s involvement in Watergate.
Hammer plays John Dean, the young White House Counsel torn between his ambition and his struggle with whether he can lie to protect the President. Edgerton will play G. Gordon Liddy, chief operative of Nixon’s ‘Plumbers’ unit tasked with plugging embarrassing leaks in the wake of the Pentagon Papers.
NBCUniversal Content Studios division is taking out the project to premium and streaming platforms with talent attached. Robbie Pickering (“Mr. Robot,” “Search Party”) will serve as showrunner and executive produce along with Esmail and Chad Hamilton.
Joel Edgerton and his brother Nash Edgerton will direct and executive produce the series. The news comes as Joel Edgerton has also signed on for Thomas M. Right’s “The Unknown Man,” a crime-drama based on a real-life Australian sting operation about two men (Edgerton, Sean Harris) on a plane who become friends, one unaware the other is an undercover cop out to convict him for an unsolved murder. That film will be released by Aussie streaming service Stan.
Source: The Wrap
