TV miniseries are all the rage these days, from Fox’s 24: Live Another Day to FX’s Fargo, and it’s not hard to see why. The ability to play a story out across a whole season allows writers and directors to toy with convention and pursue ambitious plots that just wouldn’t work as well on the big screen, while the limited episode count and commitment attracts big name stars like Halle Berry (on CBS’s Extant) and Matthew McConaughey (who did a one-season run on ‘anthology series’ True Detective, which is basically a set of self-contained miniseries from the same showrunner). Now, Oscar winner Dustin Lance Black (Milk) has become the latest Hollywood talent to contract the miniseries bug, and will be adapting Scott Berg’s Pulitzer Prize-winning biography Lindbergh for Paramount Television.
Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Killoran and Kevin McCormick are all set to produce the miniseries, which will center on the life of Charles Lindbergh, from his rise to prominence to his highly-publicized battles with the nature of celebrity. Lindbergh isn’t Black’s only small-screen project in the works – he’s been involved with a gay rights limited series at ABC, though no news has emerged on that front for a while.
Of Black coming aboard for Lindbergh, Paramount TV head Amy Powell stated:
“Lance is as talented and prolific as anyone working in television and film today, and we take enormous pride in working with him to adapt Scott’s brilliant portrait of one of the nation’s most fascinating cultural figures.It’s also incredibly gratifying to partner with Scott, Leo, Jen and Kevin on making Lindbergh an extraordinary television event that captures the scope and significance of this Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece.”
Black added:
“In Lindbergh’s story, we have the very first case of a worldwide media sensation. He was an American daredevil, innovator, record breaker and icon, but he was far from perfect. I’m eager to dig into the story of a man who stumbled in his fame, but showed a willingness to learn and attempt to rectify the unseen ramifications of what the world still considers his greatest successes … a man who urged the world to, ‘Listen until the end.’ ”
With Black involved, we’ll definitely be keeping an eye on this project, which I’d imagine a number of networks will be clamoring to snap up. Lindbergh certainly sounds like a promising series – after all, its subject is one of the most fascinating figures in American pop culture, and Black has proven himself stunningly adept at translating influential individuals from history from the page to the big screen.
