HBO has ordered Aaron Sorkin‘s untitled drama series about cable news to series, premiere date TBD.
The project features an impressive cast, including Jeff Daniels as the anchor, Emily Mortimer as his new producer, Alison Pill, Olivia Munn and Dev Patel as newsroom staffers and Sam Waterston as the wise boss. (Looking at this from a distance, the Sorkin shorthand seems as follows: Daniels is Casey, Mortimer is Dana, Pill and/or Munn is Natalie, Patel Jeremy, and Waterston a hybrid of Isaac and Leo.)
When it became clear that Aaron Sorkin’s “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” wasn’t working – in part, but not entirely, because the show-within-the-show never seemed nearly as funny as the characters insisted it was – a sentiment arose that viewers wish he had just taken the “Sports Night” approach to life at a cable news channel, rather than sketch comedy. Now he is, and with the backing of HBO plus the authority that comes with winning an Oscar for writing “The Social Network.”