Russell Crowe to Star in Showtime’s Roger Ailes Series

Showtime has ordered a limited series about Fox News founder Roger Ailes that will star Russell Crowe (Gladiator, A Beautiful Mind) in the lead role.

The eight-episode series is based on the reporting of Gabriel Sherman in New York magazine and his best-selling book, The Loudest Voice in the Room. Sherman co-wrote the initial episode with Oscar winner Tom McCarthy (Spotlight, Win Win), who will executive produce with Emmy winner Jason Blum.

The upcoming series focuses primarily on the past decade, in which Ailes arguably became the Republican Party’s de facto leader. It also includes flashbacks to defining events in Ailes’ life, including an initial meeting with Richard Nixon on the set of The Mike Douglas Show that sparked Ailes’ political career, and the sexual harassment accusations and settlements that brought his Fox News reign to an end. The project is a co-production from Showtime and Blumhouse Television (Sharp Objects, The Normal Heart).

“In many ways, the collision between the media and politics has come to define the world we live in today,” said David Nevins, the president and CEO of Showtime Networks. “We’ve seen this phenomenon depicted on screen as far back as the story of Charles Foster Kane, and it finds contemporary embodiment in the rise and fall of Roger Ailes. With Russell Crowe in the lead role, this limited series promises to be a defining story for this era.”