Russell Crowe Has Signed on to Play a Genuinely Large Villain: Roger Ailes

Russell Crowe, last seen as Dr. Jekyll in the ill-fated The Mummy reboot, is set to fill the shoes of a villain once again—albeit a far more real one. Crowe is set to play the Fox News Channel founder Roger Ailes in a forthcoming, eight-episode limited series for Showtime that is being adapted from Gabriel Sherman’s best-selling book The Loudest Voice in the Room. The series does not have an official title yet, but it has been developed with the working title Secure and Hold: The Last Days of Roger Ailes, per IndieWire.

Tom McCarthy (Spotlight) co-wrote the premiere episode with Sherman, and will executive produce the series alongside Blumhouse’s Jason Blum. Blumhouse Television and Showtime are producing the forthcoming series, which will be told from multiple points of view—they’ll have plenty to choose from, as Sherman’s book was crafted via interviews with more than 600 people. The reason for the show being told in this format is to “to shed light on the psychology that drives the political process from the top down,” according to Showtime.

Ailes died in 2017, a year after he resigned from Fox News amid various sexual harassment allegations and the settlements that followed brought his ignominious career to an end. Showtime went on to say that “to understand the events that led to the rise of Donald Trump, one must understand Ailes.” Their new show will endeavor to do so by incorporating various flashbacks to key moments in Ailes’ political and business career(s). Showtime’s CEO/president David Nevins said that, “With Russell Crowe in the lead role, this limited series promises to be a defining story for this era.” With the Venn diagram between media and politics shifting into one giant circle, the limited series is positioning itself to add more context to one of the most defining stories of the modern political era.

As of now, the series has no set premiere date.