Get ready for the Truman show.
Independent film studio Wiip has optioned the rights to adapt A.J. Baime’s 2017 nonfiction book The Accidental President: Harry S. Truman and the Four Months that Changed the World as a limited series, according to Deadline. Dylan Clark, who most recently produced the 2018 Netflix film adaptation of John Malerman’s 2014 postapocalyptic novel, Bird Box, is set to executive-produce the new series.
The book focuses on Truman’s time as president from April 1945, when he ascended to the office following the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt, to the following August, after the U.S. military dropped two atomic bombs on Japan. Kirkus called the book “a fast-paced, well-detailed chronology of Truman’s transformation from an official with little administrative responsibility into a politically astute and ultimately beloved leader.”
Baime also wrote the 2009 nonfiction book Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferrari, and Their Battle for Speed and Glory at Le Mans, which provided the basis for last year’s film Ford v Ferrari, which starred Matt Damon and Christian Bale; it won Oscars for film editing and sound editing in February. The author’s next nonfiction work, Dewey Defeats Truman: The 1948 Election and the Battle for America’s Soul, is due to be published in July.
No casting news for the limited series was announced at this early stage. There have been relatively few depictions of Truman on TV and film over the years, but Gary Sinise won a Golden Globe for his performance in the 1995 HBO film Truman, based on the Kirkus-starred 1992 biography by David McCullough.
David Rapp is the senior Indie editor.
