{"id":288737,"date":"2025-11-17T11:12:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-17T11:12:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/288737\/"},"modified":"2025-11-17T11:12:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-17T11:12:07","slug":"aaron-sorkin-says-studios-wouldnt-make-the-american-president-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/288737\/","title":{"rendered":"Aaron Sorkin Says Studios Wouldn’t Make ‘The American President’ Today"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tOscar-winning scribe Aaron Sorkin<\/a> said he doesn\u2019t think studios \u201cwould agree\u201d to make his political romantic dramedy The American President<\/a> today because its messaging would deter \u201chalf\u201d the public from wanting to go see it.<\/p>\n

\n\tSpeaking to Rolling Stone<\/a> for the 30th anniversary of the film\u2019s release, he said, \u201cLook, [The\u00a0American President] is a romantic comedy, but the two political issues at the heart of it were guns and the environment, right? The movie wouldn\u2019t get made today \u2014 a studio wouldn\u2019t agree to make it \u2014 because they would know you\u2019ve just alienated half the potential audience, which wasn\u2019t the case in 1995. The heroes I wrote in those two stories, they did things even though it would cost them popularity, which is not something you see professional politicians of either party do very often.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe feature, directed by Rob Reiner, follows popular Democratic president Andrew Shepherd (Michael Douglas) seeking reelection. But when the widowed incumbent falls for an environmental lobbyist (Annette Bening), a Republican challenger (Richard Dreyfuss) spots an opportunity to launch an attack campaign. Meanwhile, as Shepherd\u2019s approval rating slips, he seeks to secure the passage of a crucial gun control bill. <\/p>\n

\n\tWhen asked if The West Wing creator sees any parallels between Republican officials and Dreyfuss\u2019 Bob Rumson, he said, \u201cAll I see in the Republican Party today is a creepy, weird fealty to someone who doesn\u2019t deserve it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe continued later in the interview, \u201cDuring Covid, I binged every Netflix documentary about cults \u2014 NXIVM and the Way Down Cult and Sarah Lawrence, everything. And what they all have in common is this weird, passionate devotion to an utterly unremarkable person. That\u2019s where I feel we are now. I see the man-on-the-street interviews where people are calling\u00a0Donald Trump<\/a>\u00a0authentic and honest, and he means what he says, [I think] you got to be kidding me. What\u2019s new is this strange, cult-like devotion to the very last person who would deserve it. The electorate changed, and I\u2019m not good at explaining what changed it. Maybe the left drove people out of their minds.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSorkin has previously spoken about how his projects centering on civic duty would translate to modern audiences in our current political landscape. Last year, he voiced similar sentiments<\/a>, saying of the right-wing party portrayed in The West Wing: \u201cRight now, it would be implausible that the opposition party, that the Republican Party, was reasonable. People would watch that and it would be unfamiliar to them as the country they live in. On the show, while the Republicans were the opposition, they were reasonable.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe filmmaker\/writer is currently working on the anticipated followup to 2010\u2019s The Social Network, for which he penned the script. Titled The Social Reckoning<\/a>, the drama is slated for release Oct. 9, 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oscar-winning scribe Aaron Sorkin said he doesn\u2019t think studios \u201cwould agree\u201d to make his political romantic dramedy The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":288738,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[87958,49,48,361,1376,75,130924],"class_list":["post-288737","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-aaron-sorkin","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-celebrities","tag-donald-trump","tag-entertainment","tag-the-american-president"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=288737"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288737\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/288738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=288737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=288737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=288737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}