TV executives rarely resist the chance to exploit a major news story in the ongoing battle to woo viewers. And the Ebola crisis is no exception.
Fox TV Studios is now working on a limited series based on Richard Preston’s 1994 best-selling nonfiction thriller “The Hot Zone,” about the origins of the killer virus.
Producer Lynda Obst and director-producer Ridley Scott have been working on the adaptation for a year, but the project is gaining pace as Ebola continues to grab the headlines.
Here are five other examples of TV shows and films inspired by other big news stories.
“Law & Order: Special Victims Unit”
The scriptwriters for “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” are old hands when it comes to working real-life crimes and scandals into their plotlines. One of their most blatant offerings was “Selfish,” an unashamed rip-off of the infamous Casey Anthony case. The episode aired in 2009 during the 10th season of the long-running show and centered on a young mother (played by Hilary Duff) accused of murdering her child so she could be free to go out and party.
“The Honorable Woman”
When Maggie Gyllenhaal filmed the tangled Israel/Palestine spy drama “The Honorable Woman” in 2013, she couldn’t have predicted that this summer’s airing of the series on the Sundance Channel would coincide with a massive escalation in violence in the region. But since the eight-part thriller focused on complex political intrigue and terror attacks in the notoriously troubled Middle East, it was hardly a surprise.
“The Americans”
The hit FX series “The Americans” starring Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys is loosely based on the remarkable discovery by FBI agents that a seemingly ordinary surburban Montclair, NJ, couple (who went by the aliases Richard and Cynthia Murphy) were, in fact, sleeper spies for Russia. The pair, whose real names were Vladimir and Lydia Guryev, was among a group of deep-cover Russian operatives busted by the Feds in 2010 and subsequently deported.
“The Normal Heart”
When AIDS began to ravage the gay community in Manhattan’s West Village in the early ’80s, the mainstream media ignored the gravity of the crisis. But New York writer and gay rights activist Larry Kramer campaigned tirelessly to get the disease taken seriously, penning the disturbing 1984 play “The Normal Heart,” based on his horrific experiences watching close friends succumb to the virus. Twenty years on, the play was this year adapted into the gritty TV movie for HBO starring Mark Ruffalo and Matt Bomer.
“Too Big to Fail”
The real-life panic and political in-fighting during the 2008 international banking crisis came to the small screen in HBO’s 2011 TV film “Too Big to Fail,” based on the best-selling book of the same name by New York Times reporter Andrew Ross Sorkin, subtitled: “The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System — and Themselves.” William Hurt, Billy Crudup and Paul Giamatti starred in the critically-acclaimed docudrama.