NBC getting into miniseries business, casts Diane Lane as Hillary Clinton

Clearly, NBC is seeing quite a bit of benefit in reviving the miniseries genre at the moment, sparked possibly by seeing some of the massive success that the History Channel has had with both “Hatfields & McCoys” and “The Bible.” You may have already heard about some of their plans to have a “sequel” of sorts to the Biblical tale on their network, as strange as that may sound, and it also looks like they’re getting into the game of politics.

At TCA this weekend, network head Robert Greenblatt announced that there are plans in place to air a Hillary Clinton miniseries simply entitled “Hillary.” According to USA Today, this miniseries should air at some point before Clinton would potentially announce her intent to run for President in the 2016 race, and there is already a lead in place in Diane Lane.

In a press release, the network confirmed some of the following details about the project:

“[The focus is on Hillary’s life as] a wife, mother, politician and cabinet member from 1998 to the present. The script will begin with Clinton living in the White House as her husband is serving the second of his two terms as president. In the years following, she would eventually become a United States senator, run for president and, ultimately, serve the country as secretary of state.”

It is interesting in a sense that the start of the miniseries would be with one of Hillary’s low points, and that is dealing with the Presidential cheating scandal that sent her husband in part to impeachment trials. However, this miniseries seems to be interested in getting over that quickly, and there has yet to even be an actor cast to play Bill.

The benefits of a miniseries in this day and age are pretty simple: It’s less of a commitment than a full-fledged show, you can often book larger actors like Lane for the parts, and they can fill in holes in the programming. We would imagine that NBC would choose to air this on a Sunday, given that away from football, they have struggled with this night over the years.

What we find most interesting is that USA already came close to having a Hillary Clinton miniseries last year in “Political Animals,” which would have turned into a full-fledged series had the ratings been strong enough.

Photo: NBC