We are living in a strange world indeed when Fox decides to pick up a Hillary Clinton miniseries that NBC wants nothing to do with.
Two major cable news networks have planned Hillary Clinton projects to air (coincidentally) ahead of election season in 2016: CNN has a documentary in line while NBC had planned a miniseries starring Diane Lane as the former Secretary of State.
Both productions were slammed by Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus as being “extended commercials” for a possible Hillary Clinton campaign, and he threatened to pull the GOP’s primary debates from both networks if they went ahead with their plans.
No surprise there.
But then, interestingly, NBC journalists turned on their network and also slammed the Hillary Clinton miniseries. White House correspondent Chuck Todd called the miniseries “a total nightmare for NBC News.”
Andrea Mitchell, NBC’s chief foreign affairs correspondent said it would be “a really bad idea given the timing.”
So what’s going to happen to the planned production? Fox might take over, according to the New York Times .
Leslie Oren, a spokesman for Fox Television Studios, said that NBC is indeed in “the early stages” of discussions to let Fox come in as the production company on the as-yet untitled miniseries.
“There is no deal yet,” Oren said, adding that FTVS would probably become the international distributor of the project.
Of course, the Fox “plot twist” isn’t going to do anything to soften criticism of the miniseries, which NBC Entertainment boss Robert Greenblatt admitted would be aired before Hillary Clinton formally declared her intention to run for president, but not because of the GOP. They’re worried that other Democratic candidates will complain about the series, as well.