Clooney Breaks His Own Big Story, A Live 'Network'

CBS and George Clooney are planning a live TV remake of "Network," Paddy Chayefsky's critically acclaimed, scathing satire of the television industry, in which a network's news division encourages an aging anchor to rave madly on-air for the sake of bigger ratings.

I know -- but in 1976 it was considered shocking and outrageous.

Execs at CBS were taken by surprise when Clooney leaked word of the project -- being developed for next fall -- to the Associated Press while promoting his flick "Good Night, and Good Luck."

Ironically, that flick details how, in the '50s, CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow defied corporate and advertiser pressure to expose the scaremongering of Sen. Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee's communist witch hunt.

Contacted yesterday, a CBS spokesman told The TV Column that the "Network" redo is "in the works" but they're "short on details" at this early stage.

It's not the first time Clooney has done a live TV movie for CBS. Five years ago, he executive-produced and co-starred in a live remake for CBS of the 1964 Cold War flick "Fail-Safe," in which a squadron of U.S. bombers is mistakenly sent to nuke Moscow.

Nearly 16 million viewers watched CBS's live, black-and-white production, which boasted a heavyweight cast that included Richard Dreyfuss as POTUS, Brian Dennehy, Sam Elliott, James Cromwell, Harvey Keitel and Don Cheadle.

Clooney and CBS CEO Leslie Moonves go way back. In the mid-'90s when Clooney was considered something of a "show killer" (people in the TV industry are notoriously superstitious, and if an actor works on a lot of series that fail, he/she can find him/herself branded a show killer -- like Paula Marshall), Moonves went ahead and cast him to play the lead role in a little series he had developed called "ER."

These days, whenever anyone writes about Chayefsky's flick, which won several Oscars including Best Screenplay, the word "prescient" is always attached.

Longtime news anchor Howard Beale, played by Peter Finch, is toiling at the lowest-rated evening newscast.

He is given two weeks' notice and that night, on the evening news, tells viewers he will commit suicide on the air on his final broadcast.

He's effectively canned, but the network is persuaded to let him apologize on the air the next night and go out with dignity. Instead, he rants again and ratings go through the roof. The network, encouraged by an ambitious young executive (Faye Dunaway), gives him his own nightly segment and bills him as the mad prophet of the airwaves; ratings are stupendous at first, but then begin to lag. The network decides to hire members of a terrorist organization to assassinate him on the air.