ABC is in the early stages of developing an event series based on the Watergate scandal, TheWrap has learned.
Entertainment One and Bob Cooper will produce the program for the network. Jon Maas will pen the event series, which will be told from the perspective of then-White House Counsel John Dean.
The series is described as a thriller about a man who thinks he’s getting the job of a lifetime but discovers the White House is a snake pit where he’s being set up to become the fall guy for the president.
The series will partially be based on Dean’s book “The Nixon Defense: What He Knew and When He Knew It,” as well as Alden Duer Cohen’s “The Women of Watergate” and “The System,” a treatment by Jason Grote.
Maas will serve as executive producer, along with Cooper’s Storyscape Entertainment, Dan Halsted, Eric Hamburg and Jeff Field.
The Watergate Scandal centered around a 1972 break in at the Democratic National Committee offices, located at the Watergate building in Washington D.C.
The ensuing investigation implicated several high-ranking member’s of Nixon’s administration, culminating in Nixon’s resignation in 1974. To date, he is the only U.S. President to resign from office.