Julia Roberts is reuniting with Mr Robot creator Sam Esmail on another podcast adaptation as she is attached to star, alongside Sean Penn, Armie Hammer and Joel Edgerton, in a remake of Slate’s Watergate audio series Slow Burn.
Roberts, who worked with Esmail on Amazon’s Homecoming, will play Martha Mitchell, wife of Richard Nixon’s Attorney General John Mitchell in Gaslit from UCP.
The NBCUniversal Content Studios division is taking out the project to premium and streaming platforms with talent attached in a similar fashion to the way it did with Dr Death, featuring Jamie Dornan, Alec Baldwin and Christian Slater, Dirty John, with Connie Britton, who was in negotiations, and Homecoming with Roberts. All of the above projects are based on podcasts, an important source of IP to the studio.
Robbie Pickering, who has worked on Mr Robot and Search Party, will serve as showrunner and executive produce along with Esmail and Chad Hamilton under their production banner Esmail Corp, via their overall deals with UCP. Roberts will executive produce under her banner Red Om Films along with co-executive producers Lisa Gillan and Marisa Yeres Gill. Anonymous Content and Slate’s Gabriel Roth and Josh Levin will also executive produce. Leon Neyfakh, who created the podcast, will consult on the project.
Joel Edgerton and his brother Nash Edgerton, who has worked on Mr. Inbetween, will direct and executive produce the series.
The podcast, which launched in 2017, has already been turned into a six-part docuseries for Epix, produced by Left/Right.
Gaslit is a modern take on Watergate that focuses on the untold stories and forgotten characters of the scandal, from Nixon’s bumbling, opportunistic subordinates, to the deranged zealots aiding and abetting their crimes, to the tragic whistleblowers who would eventually bring the whole rotten enterprise crashing down.
Roberts plays Martha Mitchell, a celebrity Arkansan socialite and wife to Nixon’s loyal Attorney General, John Mitchell, who has a big personality and an even bigger mouth. Despite her party affiliation, she’s the first person to publicly sound the alarm on Nixon’s involvement in Watergate, causing both the Presidency and her personal life to unravel. Penn plays her husband John Mitchell. As Attorney General, Mitchell is Nixon’s most trusted advisor and best friend. Temperamental, foulmouthed and ruthless – yet hopelessly in love with his famously outspoken wife – he’ll be forced to choose between Martha and the President.
(Excerpt) Read more in: Deadline