Bill Clinton and best-selling author James Patterson are taking meetings with producers this week in an attempt to get their co-authored book, The President Is Missing, to hit the big screen.
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The competition is intense, and the two have sent out top-secret 10-page treatments to only the top producers in Hollywood. The adaptation of the former president’s time in office would be due out in June of 2018, so time for the project is also running out between writing a full script, completed production and post-production edits. If the film is made at all, it will be a feat in and of itself.
The Creative Artists Agency’s Richard Lovett is handling all the legal and licensing rights for the project, and he has said that even the treatments are under intense physical care and supervision. They are reportedly watermarked and have been sent to producers via an expiring link. The process has also apparently been extremely selective, meaning that not everyone who received a treatment will be getting a meeting with authors.
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Sources, according to The Hollywood Reporter, have said that Clinton and Patterson will be taking in-person meetings with those interested producers this week, including J.J. Abrams, Steven Spielberg, George Clooney and close friend of Clinton’s Steve Bing.
While the battle for this hefty film and big-name literary property makes its way through Hollywood, the 42nd president of the United States already has his hand in the literature industry himself, having written three books since he left office in 2001. And Patterson will most likely be getting ready for his next big Hollywood collaboration after already adapting five of his books for the big screen, producing on three of them and working on a new CBS pilot based on his novel Murder Games after eight books have already been adapted for television.
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So while the concept for The President is Missing sounds exciting, and it will be interesting to see the way of the White House and Washington through Clinton’s eyes, is this really what Hollywood needs right now? Another white male lead produced by other white males about the white male experience in America? I truly think this is a waste of time and money and a complete cash grab. Kind of like La La Land, that other white-experience-in-America movie. Isn’t one of these a year enough?
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