According to Variety, HBO has added two more historical miniseries to its development slate. The first would follow the work of Ida Tarbell, one of the leading so-called muckrakers – a term she frowned upon – at the onset of the 20th century who helped propel the antitrust case against Standard Oil, ultimately leading to its breakup in 1911. She’s best known for her book The History of the Standard Oil Company, which initially ran as pieces with McClure’s Magazine and helped instigate a significantly negative perception of the company within the public. Mimosa Jones is writing Ida Tarbell while Oprah Winfrey and her Harpo Films company are producing.
The second project, The Black Panthers, would examine the key figures within that African-American political organization during the civil rights battles of the 1960s and ’70s. Carl Franklin is writing and directing the miniseries. He wrote and directed Devil in a Blue Dress and directed High Crimes, Out of Time, an episode of Rome, the pilot for The Riches and at least one episode of HBO’s upcoming Band of Brothers follow-up, The Pacific. He’ll be working off Huey: Spirit of the Panther, a Huey Newton biography by a former Panther David Hilliard, and A Taste of Power: A Black Woman’s Story, the Elaine Brown autobiography.
In addition to those two, David Simon (The Wire) and Tom Fontana (Oz) are presumably still developing a miniseries about the hunt for John Wilkes Booth following his assassination of President Lincoln.
HBO miniseries are always special events, so I’m down for seeing all of these.
