Not #FakeNews: Charlize Theron To Play Megyn Kelly For Jay Roach’s FOX News Film
Roger Ailes is one of the main people we have to blame for the ring of hell that is FOX News (along with Rupert Murdoch, of course). Ailes ran Donald Trump's favorite source for fiction for almost twenty years, and helped launch the careers of such nightmare-faced talking heads as Sean Hannity, Megyn Kelly and Gretchen Carlson, while also resurrecting old jokes like Geraldo Rivera (which was one of his first acts after being named FOX's Chairman in 2005).
Ailes was also a prominent figure in Republican politics, having stumped for presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George Bush. After he left FOX News in disgrace in 2016, Ailes went on to become a key campaign advisor for Donald Trump. As far as contentious, bigoted, misogynistic pieces of shit in the media go, he's near the top in terms of all-time scumbags.
So, of course we're going to get a movie about him. Thankfully, the picture in question is coming from Jay Roach, who's already proven himself to be a pretty adept director of acidic political portraits, such as his Sarah Palin-centric fictionalization of the 2008 election, Game Change. The still-untitled FOX project is being financed by Annapurna - who already has the Christian Bale-starring Dick Cheney biopic shooting with filmmaker Adam McKay - and penned by The Big Short co-writer Charles Randolph.
Now, Roach has cast Charlize Theron as Megyn Kelly. Kelly was - as you all probably know - a popular anchor at FOX for over a decade who, along with Gretchen Carlson, was one of the high profile female members of that team who alleged Ailes harassed her. Kelly claims she was pressured by the network to come out in support of Ailes (thus supressing her own claims), and left FOX in 2017 for NBC.
According to THR, Roach's movie is described as an ensemble pic, with Ailes and others who were involved at FOX during his reign said to be the picture's major players. Characters included are likely to be Carlson, former anchor Greta Van Susteren, media mogul Rupert Murdoch and similarly shamed sex pest host Bill O'Reilly.
The FOX News movie is one of two political projects Roach has going at the moment, as he's also attached to direct HBO's mini-series adaptation of Michael Wolff's infamous Trump takedown, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House. No word on when either of these pieces will see screens, but we can probably expect a whole lot more high profile casting once they get closer to production. Now, give me Paul Dano doing a Tucker Carlson impersonation, or shut it all down.
