Russell Crowe to play Roger Ailes in Showtime mini-series about the late Fox News founder

Showtime has greenlit an eight-episode limited series about Roger Ailes, the late and disgraced founder of Fox News
Academy Award-winning actor Russell Crowe will play the controversial figure, in his first television series
The series is based off Gabriel Sherman's biography of Ailes 'The Loudest Voice in the Room' - as well as his reporting on Fox News for New York magazine
It was Sherman's reporting on the many sexual harassment allegations against Ailes that led to his resignation in July 2016
Ailes died less than a year later, after falling at his Florida home

By Ashley Collman For Dailymail.com

Published: 20:30 BST, 25 June 2018 | Updated: 00:31 BST, 26 June 2018

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Russell Crowe is set to play Roger Ailes in a Showtime mini-series about the late and disgraced Fox News founder.

The news was announced Monday but Showtime and the network's production partner on the series, Blumhouse Television.

It's unclear when the as-yet-untitled series will premiere, but EW says it's likely to be sometime in 2019.

Russell Crowe (left) will play Roger Ailes (right) in an upcoming Showtime mini-series

The limited series will run for eight episodes and mark Academy Award-winning Australian actor Crowe's first foray into American television. The role will no doubt involve a lot of make-up to turn 54-year-old Crowe into the older Ailes, who was 77 when he died in May 2017.

The as-yet-untitled series is based off Gabriel Sherman's biography The Loudest Voice in the Rom

The series is based on Gabriel Sherman's best-selling Ailes biography - The Loudest Voice in the Room - as well as his reporting for New York magazine on the sexual harassment allegations against Ailes that lead to his downfall.

Ailes was forced to resign from Fox News, the right-wing network he helped found in 1996. in July 2016, after multiple women accused him of sexual harassment.

He died less than a year later, after falling and hitting his head at his Florida home.

Sherman co-wrote the first episode with Academy Award-winning director Tom McCarthy (Spotlight). The project was given the greenlight when a small writer's room was put together and churned out multiple scripts for the series. Sherman will be an executive producer on the show.

Showtime says the show will focus on the past decade of Ailes' career, and flash back to defining moments of his life.

Sherman, left, co-wrote the first episode with Academy Award winning director Tom McCarthy (right, Spotlight)

Sherman excitedly shared the news of Crowe's casting to his Twitter on Monday

'To understand the events that led to the rise of Donald Trump, one must understand Ailes. The upcoming limited series takes on that challenge, focusing primarily on the past decade in which Ailes arguably became the Republican Party’s de facto leader, while flashing back to defining events in Ailes’ life, including an initial meeting with Richard Nixon on the set of The Mike Douglas Show that gave birth to Ailes’ political career and the sexual harassment accusations and settlements that brought his Fox News reign to an end.

'Told through multiple points of view, the limited series aims to shed light on the psychology that drives the political process from the top down. McCarthy’s deft handling of similarly complex, high-stakes storytelling in Spotlight earned him an Oscar for co-writing 2017’s Academy Award winner for best picture, plus an Oscar nomination for directing. For the primary source material, The Loudest Voice in the Room, Sherman interviewed more than 600 people,' Showtime said.

'In many ways, the collision between the media and politics has come to define the world we live in today,' David Nevins, President and CEO of Showtime Networks, said in a press release. 'We’ve seen this phenomenon depicted on screen as far back as the story of Charles Foster Kane, and it finds contemporary embodiment in the rise and fall of Roger Ailes. With Russell Crowe in the lead role, this limited series promises to be a defining story for this era.'

The series will be the latest to draw inspiration from Fox News scandal. HBO is currently airing a show called Succession, which is loosely inspired by the Murdoch family, who own Fox News and were heavily involved in the decision to push Ailes out of the company.