Director Bharat Nalluri may have found his John Houseman for a big screen drama based on the 1938 The War of the Worlds radio broadcast.
Martin Freeman (The Hobbit, Sherlock) is currently attached to We Interrupt This Program play Houseman, according to a report on ThatHashTagShow.com.
Deadline revealed last summer that the script would focus not only the infamous broadcast, but the stormy relationship between Mercury Theatre founders Houseman and Orson Welles as well. (No word yet on who will play Welles.)
Nalluri’s screen credits include The Man Who Invented Christmas and Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day.
We Interrupt This Program, financed by Echo Lake Entertainment, is scripted by Sean Sorensen.
Echo Lake’s Doug Mankoff and Andy Spaulding are producing the film with Sorensen.
The making of The War of the Worlds broadcast has inspired two TV productions: Studio One: The Night America Trembled in 1957 and The Night That Panicked America. an ABC movie written by Nicholas Meyer (Time After Time, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan).
Public reaction to The War of the Worlds broadcast was explored in the 2017 film Brave New Jersey, written by Michael Dowling and directed by Jody Lambert.
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