HBO has found programming gold with shows like Game of Thrones and Boardwalk Empire, two of the hottest shows on television. While these shows still have long lives ahead of them, the network isn’t slowing down anytime soon.
Recently, HBO debuted the much anticipated series Girls, created by Lena Dunham, followed shortly by Armando Iannucci‘s Veep. Rounding out the trifecta of new HBO shows is Aaron Sorkin‘s The Newsroom, which is set to premiere this summer.
Yesterday, Vanity Fair got an exclusive first look at the cast of this new show, with photographs by the highly sought after Annie Leibovitz.
The Newsroom boasts a cast of exceptional and familiar faces. Jeff Daniels will star as Will McAvoy, a cynical news anchor who is finding a way to balance business with pleasure. On the work side of things, his ex-lover played by Emily Mortimer doubles as the executive producer Mackenzie MacHale.
They are joined by Sam Waterston as network president Charlie Skinner, and Jane Fonda, taking the role of Leona Lansing, CEO of the network’s parent company. Finally, the cast is rounded out by some quite in-demand talent – Dev Patel, Alison Pill and Oliva Munn.
“I love television,” Sorkin tells the magazine. “I love putting on a show every week. I love coming to work with the same people every week. I love the immediacy of it. But the price that you pay for all that is the ferocity of the schedule. We have to make a one-hour movie every nine days. So I have to write a one-hour movie every nine days. You’re writing an episode, you’re shooting an episode, and one is in post production while another is in pre-production, casting, and scouting. It becomes a little bit like a MASH unit.”
The Newsroom premiers on HBO on June 24th and you can check out the photo above for a look at the cast.
