Last May, Netflix announced at President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama had signed on to a “storytelling partnership” with the streaming giant. As for what that partnership would entail, both Netflix and the Obamas have kept quiet in the five months that have since passed. According to a new report at Deadline, however, it seems the power couple is getting ready to option their first project: a television adaptation of Moneyball and The Big Short writer Michael Lewis’s new book, The Fifth Risk.
So what’s it about? Among other things, the crazily disorganized early days of President Donald Trump’s White House administration and the transition between the two presidencies. Per published W.W. Norton’s blurb for the book:
Michael Lewis’s brilliant narrative takes us into the engine rooms of a government under attack by its own leaders. In Agriculture the funding of vital programs like food stamps and school lunches is being slashed. The Commerce Department may not have enough staff to conduct the 2020 Census properly. Over at Energy, where international nuclear risk is managed, it’s not clear there will be enough inspectors to track and locate black market uranium before terrorists do.
Deadline notes that the Obamas are also “exploring projects,” and that “nothing specifically has yet gotten a greenlight,” but their plans for The Fifth Risk‘s television adaptation is pretty close to being a done deal. Lewis himself will apparently be revealing the news of the Obamas’ plans for his book on the next episode of Katie Couric’s podcast, which drops Thursday.
(Via Deadline)
