Rupert Murdoch Indie Biopic In The Works

Fair and balanced, that's the slogan of Rupert Murdoch's insanely profitable Fox News Channel. The slogan has of course been lampooned by all and sundry given the channel's clear right wing focus, however one wonders that if the power were given to his detractors, would they actually strive to live up to the slogan. 

Now we'll have something of an answer to that question with the news that Australian film funding agency Screen Australia has just invested money to develop a script based on the life and times of Rupert Murdoch. Called The News of the World, the biopic aims to tell the story of Murdoch's rise (and fall from grace?) and frame it using the story of that newspaper - starting when he bought the paper in the 1960s. 

The project sounds fantastic, should it be done right. However I have my doubts considering the one of the writers behind the project is Bob Ellis. Ellis of course wrote Newsfront for Phillip Noyce and knows the territory, however he's so famously left leaning that if he tried to walk in a straight line he'd end up walking in a tight circle. So I'll temper my enthusiasm for the time being. Ellis is co-writing with Stephen Ramsay.