UNTITLED 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT PROJECT (ABC) - Harvey Keitel ("Be Cool"), Patricia Heaton ("Everybody Loves Raymond"), Amy Madigan ("Carnivale"), Shaun Toub ("Crash") and Stephen Root ("NewsRadio") are all set to star in the Alphabet's six-hour, $30-$40 million mini-series, which will detail the events of the recent terror attacks against the United States, including those on 9/11, the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the U.S.S. Cole and the disrupted millennium attacks. Keitel will play F.B.I. agent (and Al-Qaeda expert) John O'Neill, who died when the first plane hit the World Trade Center on 9/11, with Heaton as Barbara Bodine, the U.S. ambassador to Yemen who clashed with O'Neill; Madigan as a top C.I.A. analyst; Toub as the F.B.I. informant who helped bring down the first WTC attack; and Root as famed White House terrorism guru Richard Clarke.
Production recently began in Toronto* on the project with David L. Cunningham ("To End All Wars") directing from a script by Cyrus Nowrasteh ("Into the West") with Marc Platt executive producing. Serving as advisers to the production are former New Jersey Gov. Tom Keane and former ABC News anchor John Miller. As for specifics about the project, it's understood part one will focus on the 1993 bombing of the WTC; part two on two U.S. embassy bombings, the attack on the U.S.S. Cole and a plot to disrupt millennium celebrations; and part three on the planning for the 9/11 attacks. Platt also has said he isn't aiming for Hollywood-style over dramatization but rather a factual account using the 9/11 Commission Report as the basis. He also confirmed they won't be casting actors for Osama bin Laden, President Clinton or President Bush, choosing rather to use news footage of the trio.
*Filming in Canada — blasphemous, insulting, or ironic? You decide.
Hopefully this production will have at least a nanoparticle of merit, unlike the laughable-if-it-wasn't-tragic propaganda vehicle DC 9/11: Time of Crisis from Showtime.
As Bush's month-long respite from his "hard work," August would be a great time for Comedy Central to dust off the 2001 Trey Parker series That's My Bush.
