On the heels of broadcast journalism being thwarted by way of President Trump, IndieWire can announce that iconic Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein biopic “All the President’s Men” will get a 2025 spin by way of more than a few Oscar winners.
Robert Downey Jr., Kenneth Lonergan, Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, J. Smith-Cameron, and Ramy Youssef will all participate in a one-night-only staged reading of William Goldman’s Academy Award-winning 1976 screenplay about the Watergate scandal that led to President Richard Nixon’s resignation. John Benjamin Hickey will direct the reading, with additional stars will be announced in the coming weeks. The cast will participate in a Q&A as well. The event will take place at the acclaimed Guild Hall in East Hampton, NY on Monday, August 25 at 7:00 p.m. ET.
The live “All the President’s Men” reading is presented by nonprofit arts and community The Center at West Park (CWP), which is based on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.
Tickets for the one night-only performance of “All the President’s Men” range from $1,000 to $10,000 and will be on sale here beginning July 23. Tickets $5,000 and higher include an invitation to a post-performance garden reception at Guild Hall with cast members and the creative team.
This isn’t the only A-lister reading of “All the President’s Men” in the years of Trump’s presidency: In 2018, former “West Wing” stars Bradley Whitford, Richard Schiff, Joshua Malina, and Ed Begley Jr. took part in a live reading of the film at Los Angeles City Hall.
“All the President’s Men” was originally directed by Alan J. Pakula and starred Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman. The feature was the second highest-grossing film behind “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest” that year during its release.
“West Wing” creator Aaron Sorkin previously said in 2010 that “All The President’s Men” made “journalists be rock stars” onscreen, adding at the time, “There are members of the press that are trying like hell [to uphold good journalism standards]…but they are getting drowned out by a populous that doesn’t have time or energy to pull the good from the bad.”
The “Newsroom” creator added, “Politics have become even more polarizing than in the Nixon era. When you make a film about politics there is a risk of alienating your audience and cutting it in half.”