Showtime is expected to move up the premiere date for its upcoming limited series based on former FBI director James Comey’s memoir to have it air before the November election.
Last week, Showtime announced that “The Comey Rule,” which stars Brendan Gleeson as President Donald Trump, would air in late November. The election is scheduled for Nov. 3. “We will be announcing several changes to our schedule and ‘The Comey Rule’ is most likely moving to air before the election,” a Showtime spokesperson said on Tuesday.
The New York Times was first to report on the upcoming move and added that “Comey Rule” director Billy Ray was unhappy with the initial decision to have it air after the election.
“We all were hoping to get this story in front of the American people months before the coming election,” he wrote in an email to the cast, per the Times. “And that was a reasonable expectation considering that we’d been given a mandate by the network to do whatever was necessary to deliver by May 15.
“But at some point in March or April, that mandate changed,” Mr. Ray continued. The Times’ continued that Ray wanted to take the series elsewhere but ViacomCBS did not allow him to.
Representatives for Ray did not immediately respond to TheWrap’s request for comment.
The series is based on former FBI director James Comey’s memoir, “A Higher Loyalty.” Jeff Daniels stars as Comey.
“The Comey Rule” also stars Holly Hunter as former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates, Michael Kelly as former FBI director Andrew McCabe, Scoot McNairy as former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, Peter Coyote as Robert Mueller and Kingsley Ben-Adir as former president Barack Obama.
“A Higher Loyalty,” which was released in April 2018 by Flatiron Books, gets its title from Trump’s reported desire for Comey to give him a loyalty pledge. Comey was first appointed FBI director by former President Barack Obama in 2013 and was fired by Trump less than a year into his presidency.