You wait for one movie about the sexual-harassment-fueled downfall of the American Fox News Chairman and CEO, Roger Ailes, and two come along together. Fair and Balanced is one of two major projects in the pipeline about the contraversial anchorman. First up is the Showtime TV movie, The Loudest Voice in the Room, starring Russell Crowe as Ailes, and then there’s Fair And Balanced, which has just cast Nicole Kidman to star alongside Charlize Theron as two other notable Fox anchors involved in the scandal.
According to Variety, Kidman will play Gretchen Carlson, a woman who parlayed winning the 1989 Miss America pageant into a career in broadcasting – and who became the catalyst for an explosion of allegations against Roger Ailes after filing a lawsuit against him for sexual harassment on July 6, 2016.
For Kidman, the role comes after recent small screen success as the co-star of HBO’s returning Big Little Lies and a run on the BBC series, Top Of The Lake. She’ll next be seen on the big screen in the November-scheduled drama, Boy Erased, followed by her DC Comics movie debut as Queen Atlanna, opposite Jason Momoa’s Aquaman.
Fair and Balanced will be directed by Jay Roach, working off a script by Charles Randolph (The Big Short). Roach, who made his mark with comedies like the Austin Powers movies, Meet the Parents/Meet the Fockers and Dinner for Schmucks, also fielded the 2015 Dalton Trumbo biopic Trumbo, in which Bryan Cranston played the blacklisted screenwriter, as well as a 2016 HBO TV movie, All the Way, in which Cranston returned for Roach to play president Lyndon Johnson. – While Fair And Balanced has yet to cast Roger Ailes, it’s a pretty safe bet that Cranston is in the conversation somewhere.
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We’ll keep you updated on Fair And Balanced as the news arrives. [Shuffles papers. Returns to the weather].