Hollywood Bracing for Wave of Trump-Inspired TV Pitches, Fox Boss Says
Fictionalized versions of him may be flooding your TV screens soon enough.
The boss of the Fox Television Group, which produces fare ranging from “This Is Us” to “The Simpsons,” predicts that pitch meetings are about to get Trump-y, now that the volatile real estate mogul is about to move into the Oval Office and is dominating headlines with virtually every tweet.
“I’m sure we will,” Gary Newman, co-chairman and CEO of Fox Television Group, said in an interview Wednesday with TheWrap at the Television Critics Association press tour in Pasadena, when asked if he expects a wave of Trump-inspired scripts.
Fox is controlled by News Corp. billionaire Rupert Murdoch, a Trump supporter, who last year took the reins at Fox News Channel following the ouster of Roger Ailes, who had been accused of sexual harassment by numerous women.
Fox News is a very separate sort of entity, and we don’t receive any pressure from our management about doing shows that are appealing to certain groups or anything.
[...] honestly, my personal political feelings are not that relevant to the programs we’re selecting ….