NBC is looking to cash in on the revived cultural popularity of American history by creating a television drama based on the life of the nation's first president.
The network has put into development a drama, tentatively titled "George Washington," from Oscar-winning writer David Seidler, Barry Levinson, Tom Fontana and a company behind TV's Downton Abbey.
Selder, a Brit known for his success taking on King George VI in "The King's Speech," will write the script based on Ron Chernow's Pulitzer Prize-winning best seller "Washington: A Life."
“George Washington” is described as an intimate look at the enigmatic leader who became the father of a nation on one side of the Atlantic and a terrorist on the other, a man to be eliminated at all costs by the British Crown. As episodes move back and forth through the war hero and President’s life and tell the little-known and unlikely story of his survival and triumph, his true character is revealed for the first time. And he is not the man who chopped down the cherry tree.
"There's George Washington the national icon, gazing out from the dollar bill with his mouthful of supposedly wooden teeth, and then there's the George Washington who had an adulterous affair with his best friend's wife," Seidler said. "The George Washington obsessed with social status, finely tailored clothes, his image. Not an icon, a very human, human-being, who learned how to lead. That's the man I want to understand."
The aim appears to be at humanizing the first president, including both positives and negatives, advancements and shortfalls similar to Steven Spielberg's recent film "Lincoln," which gave a "warts and all" portrayal of the nation's 16th president, Abraham Lincoln.
Seidler, Levinson and Fontana will produce with Levinson directing the pilot.
"What's so interesting is here was a man who was more instrumental to what our country is today and more famous than any other figure in our history, and yet no one knows anything about him," Levinson said. "We know the myth of the man, but the reality was he was a flawed and troubled character who overcame his flaws to become one of the foremost leaders of this nation."
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