Stranger than fiction: ADN publisher, writer are co-producing ABC series on their paper

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A drama that will star Hilary Swank and Tom McCarthy is sure to feature the Anchorage Daily News, as two of the coproducers are tightly bound with the newspaper.

The Hollywood Reporter announced that Swank will star in a newspaper drama that is being written, directed and exec produced by McCarthy for ABC, which has picked up the untitled Alaska drama.The project is being eyed for consideration as part of a 2022-23 pilot season.

“The drama revolves around a star journalist (Swank) who moves to Alaska for a fresh start after a career-killing misstep and finds redemption personally and professionally after joining a daily metro newspaper in Anchorage,” the publication wrote. Ryan Binkley, publisher and owner of the ADN as a member of the Binkley Company, and Kyle Hopkins, a hardline leftist who writes for the newspaper, will co-produce.

Swank has won Oscars for Boys Don’t Cry and Million Dollar Baby, and recently starred in Netflix’s drama Away.

14 COMMENTS

  1. The plot idea reminds me of the last year’s drama about Maria Athens without the sexual scandal with a local high profile politician. How coincidental!

  2. The show would draw more attention if it patterned itself after the Ketchikan Daily News or the Nome Nugget, two REAL Alaska papers. The ADN is a newspaper run by out-of-touch left-wingers which offers nothing to the public about true grit in the Last Frontier. Here, the publishers are a couple of rich kids who inherited their wealth and know nothing about hard work, nor have they been battle-tested by sacrifice and ability to connect with ordinary working Alaskans.

  3. There’s not a more partisan and corrupt media outlet in all of Alaska.

    Sounds like a perfect fit for a network show..

  4. Let me guess how this crap will play out. Poor commie californian will come to Anchorage and then there’ll be a parade of Alaskan stereotype characters. There’ll be the quirky pot head hippie friend, the evil conservative meat eater Alaskan who will make the poor commie cry and at the end there’ll be a wise native who will channel the great spirit and make everything perfect again. ? oh sorry..I just threw up in my mouth a little.

    • Good analysis. I have had to note to some other thinking adults on multiple occasions in the last two years that fiction is fiction — as in “made up.” A fiction writer of any stripe has the ability to shape the characters as they wish. Usually they make the male conservative of the story into an absolute monster and a female leftist into an angel. The other characters are also arrayed as the writer wishes. That in this instance the story can play really fast and loose with the facts, it should be a dandy.

  5. The possible timing is very interesting. If it arrives in time for next year’s election cycle, things could get very interesting. Think about the reporter “investigating” that big bad governor and swooning all over some of those left wing candidates, or even better, helping them to take over the state. Grist for the mill. Has been used before, by shows like “Madam Secretary” which finally died after Hillary met her Waterloo and was totally extinguished about three years later. Oh, but she was so noble in that show…

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