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HBO to chronicle ‘extraordinary’ US presidential election in a miniseries

Donald Trump was anxious to get his hands on Hillary's hacked emails.

Donald Trump was anxious to get his hands on Hillary's hacked emails. Photo: Getty

Less than four months after the 2016 US presidential election, cable TV network HBO has commissioned a miniseries about the campaign that catapulted Donald Trump into the White House in November.

HBO said in a statement that the miniseries, to be produced by Tom Hanks, would “tell the story of Donald Trump’s dramatic, improbable victory over Hillary Clinton”.

The great unknowns are: who will be cast in the two lead roles [at this stage Alec Baldwin will continue his parodys on Saturday Night Live], what the working title will be and an eventual broadcast date.

HBO said the miniseries will come from the same team that produced the award-winning Game Change film about the 2008 election, starring Julianne Moore as Sarah Palin, the Republican vice-presidential candidate.

The miniseries will be based on the third instalment of the Game Change series of campaign books by New York Times best-selling co-authors Mark Halperin and John Heilemann.

HBO Films president Len Amato said in a statement the project “promises to vividly capture the most unique and impactful event in modern American politics”.

“We are thrilled to continue our relationship with Mark Halperin and John Heilemann, whose work on their bestselling book Game Change set the bar for political reporting and storytelling inside a presidential campaign,” Mr Amato said.

“Reuniting Game Change director and executive producer Jay Roach and Playtone producers Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman with Mark and John for a project based on their upcoming book promises to vividly capture the most unique and impactful event in modern American politics,” he said.

HBO said Halperin and Heilemann’s book Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime was widely hailed as the definitive account of the historic 2008 presidential election, and was followed four years later by the New York Times bestselling sequel Double Down: Game Change 2012.

Meanwhile, it won’t be the first project in the pipeline to document the lengthy and highly controversial US election campaign, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

It was reported in February that Mark Boal, who won an Oscar for writing The Hurt Locker, will team up with producer Megan Ellison to produce an eight to ten-part ‘political drama’.

Ellison was instrumental in the making of the 2012 movie Zero Dark Thirty, the Boal-written, Kathryn Bigelow-directed Osama bin Laden thriller, and is also producing Boal and Bigelow’s latest venture, a drama based on the Detroit race riots, according to the celebrity website.

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