ESSENTIAL INDUSTRY AND AWARD NEWS 

SEPTEMBER 25, 2020

George Clooney Faces the End of the World

“Something’s gone wrong,” writes Anthony Breznican in HWD today. “Far away, Earth is silent. Toxic clouds swirl around it in serpentine coils. Nothing seems to be alive below them.” This is the setup for The Midnight Sky, an upcoming science-fiction drama directed by and starring George Clooney. The story is dark—it follows Clooney’s character, a scientist at a remote arctic research station who may be the last man on Earth, and is also dying from cancer. It’s a premise that may strike viewers as eerily prescient: “The sickness of hate and the elements that come from that, battles and wars—that has been percolating for quite some time,” he said. “There’s the sadness [in the film] of what man is capable of doing to man and how easily it can just be taken away.” Yet even in this dire world, there is a chance for salvation. “I wanted it to be about redemption in a way,” Clooney told Breznican. “I wanted there to be some hopefulness in a fairly bleak story about the end of mankind.” 

Elsewhere in HWD, Julie Miller gets to the bottom of a new series that reinvestigates the grandfather of all true-crime stories; Richard Lawson obliterates The Comey Rule, coming this weekend to Showtime; Joy Press looks into how reality shows are navigating their pandemic-era new normal; and Katie Nicholl reports on Meghan Markle’s political ambitions. 

Midnight Special

A first look at George Clooney’s new Netflix movie, in which he plays a dying scientist facing the end of the world: “My wife was very happy when I finished shooting this.”

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Into the Wilderness

In 1970, handsome young Green Beret captain Jeffrey MacDonald was accused of slaughtering his wife and two daughters. Fifty years later, the controversial murder case is examined again in a new FX docuseries.

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Just What We Needed

An unnecessary two-part miniseries tells James Comey’s side of the whole emails/Russia thing.

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Reality Bites

As the pandemic wears on, is it safe to stick strangers in a house in order to film a reality series—and do we still want to watch?

R E A D  M O R E »

President Markle?

Her representatives insist she has no plan to run for office, but a close friend suggests it’s the main reason Meghan Markle didn’t give up her American citizenship when marrying into the royal family.