Hollywood loves giving us entertainment we never asked for, like reboots of reboots of Ghostbusters, a Fresh Prince of Bel-Air drama, and 12 million seasons of Keeping Up With the Kardashians. Now, in the grand tradition of continuing to make everything but what American consumers want to see, Hollywood will be giving us a movie about the events at the Capitol on January 6th.
Because of course they are.
Given the names attached, one can already imagine the absurdity of what this movie might entail. Billy Ray will direct. You’ll know him from his most recent directorial project that you most certainly did not watch, along with most of America outside Hollywood and a few New York City boroughs, The Comey Rule. Ray told Deadline he wants take a “ground-level” look at the events.
“The goal was to do a ground-level view of a momentous day,” said Ray. “It’s about protesters who became rioters and cops who became defenders of democracy. Someone else can tell the story of the chaos at the White House on that day. I wanted to stay in the trenches.”
Ray will be joined by producer Adam McKay, who’s most recent project Don’t Look Up, a metaphorical movie about the perils of climate change deniers, has achieved about the same level of success as Ray’s last project – hailed by the critics, panned by the audiences.
Ray, who initially developed a J6 project at Showtime as a five-episode limited series, went back to the drawing board. He turned 300 pages of scripted material into a 120-page feature script and created something entirely new.
“Billy has written a screenplay that is not only harrowing and terrifying but is sure to become the definitive cinematic document on that gut-wrenching day,” McKay said.
We’ll all be waiting on pins and needles to not watch this “definitive cinematic document”, but if you’d like to watch an actual cinematic document from someone who was actually there that day, check out actor/director Nick Searcy’s documentary on the riots and the ensuing arrests, Capitol Punishment. Our own reporter, Jennifer Oliver O’Connell had the privilege of interviewing Searcy about the film.