Lifetime making TV movie based on Matt Lauer – Ann Curry ‘Today Show’ saga

Just when you thought that everyone was going to let go of the kerfuffle over at “The Today Show” with Matt Lauer and Ann Curry, Lifetime (as they choose to do with all “ripped from the headlines” stories) has decided to take the paddles to it and bring it back to life.

According to TVNewser, Liz Gateley and Tony DiSantos are executive-producing a TV movie for the cable network that is based on the book Top of the Morning: Inside the Cutthroat World of Morning TV by Brian Stelter, with the focus being on (you guessed it) this long-polarizing pair. The project could be in the casting stages soon, but it is still early on in development.

Personally, we still don’t quite understand why this would make a particularly good TV movie, or a good story to continue to talk about other than that it shows some of the ever-present problems in the TV news business. Ann was let go because she and Matt didn’t have good chemistry together, and while you can make a justifiable argument here that gender politics played a role (as did probably the fact that it was easier to get rid of Ann contractually and Matt was a more familiar face), nothing save for Ann’s final day on the show was overtly dramatic enough to turn it into a full-fledged movie. If this was on HBO and had a big-name scripted TV producer like Aaron Sorkin on board to adapt the solid source material, we’d be intrigued. But as it is, we don’t feel like this project could really get at just how complicated and intricate the situation with Ann, Matt, and the show really was.

The last thing that we would personally not want to see is an entire two hours of making Lauer into some sort of supervillain responsible for everything. He is not exactly innocent in how the situation was handled, but to claim he was the only culprit would be unfair.

Do you want to see a TV movie about Curry and Lauer, or is this about a year too old for you? Share your thoughts below.