Not long after a report claiming Olivia Munn was in talks with Aaron Sorkin for a reboot of HBO’s The Newsroom came out, the celebrity screenwriter himself was asked about it during his appearance on Monday’s The Late Late Show with James Corden. “Is this true?” the host asked him as fellow guest Mahershala Ali and the studio audience erupted into applause. Sorkin’s response? “No.”
“I wish the show was on the air now,” he said. “I would love to be writing it now, but there are other things coming up. I have no plans to return to anything I’ve done.”
Sorkin’s comment about wishing The Newsroom was “on the air now” was prompted by Corden’s observation that now, more than ever, people are constantly talking about the news. He’s not wrong, and judging by the sheer reaction that the initial rumor had generated, it wouldn’t be all that surprising if HBO or someone else high up in the executive food chain of TV revivals had already decided to test the waters. Even so, it seems the initial report is untrue and The Newsroom isn’t being rebooted…or Sorkin is lying.
After all, he’s been spending a lot of time with The Newsroom lead actor Jeff Daniels, as the pair adapted Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mocking Bird for Broadway. And with other reports concerning Sorkin’s love of actor Richard Schiff’s The West Wing reboot pitch and talk of a possible The Social Network sequel, we know the man is not above returning to his own wheelhouse.
