Brian Stelter’s Top of the Morning is getting the Lifetime Treatment.
The female-skewing network is in early development on an original TV movie based on the morning news tome from the former New York Times writer. Liz Gately and Tony DiSanto will executive produce the telepic through their Diga Vision. The company currently is in negotiations with a writer on the project.
The buzzworthy book was published in April of this year, and met with mixed reviews. As part of the reporting process, Stelter, who recently moved to CNN as host of Reliable Sources, spent much of his consumed by morning news coverage, with a heavy focus on Ann Curry’s short-lived stint as co-host of Today and the high-profile rivalry between Today and Good Morning America.
Gately and DiSanto decided an adaptation would be of appeal upon returning from the annual A&E producers offsite earlier this year. “We were looking at the success of Vikings and The Bible and knowing that Nancy Dubuc had taken over Lifetime, we thought what could be their big factual movie that’s big in pop culture now," says Gately, who was reading the numerous news stories on the topic as well as Stelter's book at the time. The pair stuck a deal with Stelter and brought Morning to Lifetime.
For Diga, this marks a return to Lifetime, where the former MTV execs produced unscripted series My Life is a Lifetime Movie. Other projects from the three-year-old pop culture focused production company include MTV’s Teen Wolf, Ke$sha: My Crazy Beautiful Life, History’s I Love the 1880s and an upcoming scripted adaptation of horror pic Scream at MTV.
More to come...
