Well, that didn’t take long. Shortly after the Republican National Committee unanimousl passed a resolution barring NBC and CNN from hosting 2016 primary debates if they move forward with projects related to Hillary Clinton, an NBC executive said everyone needs to calm down. After all, the Hillary Clinton miniseries is in its first stages and may never end up seeing the light of day anyway, the exec said.
“The Hillary Clinton movie has not been ordered to production, only a script is being written at this time,” NBC Entertainment Chairman Bob Greenblatt said, according to Deadline. “It is ‘in development’, the first stage of any television series or movie, many of which never go to production. Speculation, demands, and declarations pertaining to something that isn’t created or produced yet seem premature.”
Greenblatt made his statements as the Hollywood Reporter revealed that Fox Television Studios pulled out of participating in the four-hour miniseries. Still, it seems the deal fell apart more due to the inability of coming to a mutually agreeable deal than the controversy over the planned miniseries.
Greenblatt was clearly trying to create buzz when he announced the project during the Summer press tour. But he may have underestimated how much of a headache it would become for the network, points out Deadline’s Lisa de Moraes. The project has even come under criticism from inside NBC, with several of its news division stars criticizing the planned miniseries as “a total nightmare for NBC News,” as Chuck Todd put it.
