The Looming Tower is an American drama television miniseries based on a book of the same name by Lawrence Wright released from 28 February to 18 April 2018 in Hulu. The series consists of ten episodes and is created and executives are produced by Dan Futterman, Alex Gibney, and Wright. In addition, Futterman acts as a showrunner for the series and Gibney directs the first episode.
Video The Looming Tower (miniseries)
Premise
The project originated from Ali Soufan and Lawrence Wright's consciousness that both offered offers from studios and production companies regarding the rights to their books about the eve of the September 11 terrorist attacks. The couple met with filmmaker Alex Gibney, who has adapted Wright's one-man show, My Travel to Al Qaeda, and Going Clear for HBO. Wright describes the collaboration with Gibney saying, "He's a documentary, and he understands the importance of truth.We've been in the trench, I came to believe him, and that's what I want - someone I think can handle and negotiate this very difficult moral question. "After the partnership, the team began to interview prospective performers. They soon landed on screenwriter Dan Futterman after one meeting, and then decided to work on their field for the series. After perfecting their pitch, they approached HBO, Netflix and Amazon with the project. As a courtesy, they also reached out to Hulu without actually putting them in consideration because the perception of streaming services is just as a place to stream episodes of network television shows. However, during their meeting with Hulu they were offered direct orders, short development processes, promises not to give up under pressure from the federal agents depicted in the series, and the greatest financial commitment of any service or network they had previously met. It's because of the terms and conditions that the producers finally decide to sign contracts with the company.
During pre-production, producers spend months doing deep homework. It involves interviewing real-life counterparts of the characters they bring to life, including Ali Soufan and his wife; former advisor to the National Security Council's counterterrorism adviser Richard Clarke; former and current FBI I-49 members; and former CIA members. Futterman has mentioned that in addition to adapting Wright's book, this series is also taken from Soufan's book, The Black Banner: The In Story of 9/11 and the War Against Al Qaeda and the 9/11 Commission Report.
In September 2016, Hulu ordered The Looming Tower into a series from Legendary Television with executive producers including Alex Gibney, Dan Futterman, and Lawrence Wright. It was announced that the limited series will consist of ten episodes and premiere in 2017. It was later reported that Craig Zisk is also an executive producer for the series and will direct as well. In the end, five different directors were selected to lead the series' ten episodes: Zisk, Michael Slovis, John Dahl, Ali Selim, and Alex Gibney. The first episode of the show was directed by Gibney, episodes six and seven directed by Slovis, and eight, nine, and ten episodes directed by Zisk. This series of stories requires many international locations with the first five episodes having scenes arranged in seven countries and ten cities. At the start of the development process, Zisk and Gibney continued several international location search missions, to give the director the option of choosing a movie.
Casting
In January 2017, it was announced that Tahar Rahim was cast in one of the main roles of the series as Ali Soufan. In February 2017, Michael Stuhlbarg and Bill Camp were announced as regular series players and served as Richard Clarke and Robert Chesney, respectively. In March 2017, Jeff Daniels was cast as John O'Neill. Also announced that the moon is casting Sullivan Jones, Virginia Kull, Louis Cancelmi, Peter Sarsgaard, and Wrenn Schmidt as regular customers and Ella Rae Peck as guests. In May 2017, Alec Baldwin served as George Tenet in a guest role.
After being cast as a late O'Neill, Jeff Daniels struggled to get close to his role. He ends up doing significant research that he does by talking to those who know O'Neill. At one point, he spent the night in a bar in Lower Manhattan with ten of O'Neill's colleagues, who had worked with him for years. He commented, "I had a great meeting with the guys, walked to the corner, turned around to get a taxi and there was the World Trade Center.To feel it you needed the spirit of what John was fighting for."
Filming
The series began filming on May 3, 2017 in New York City and is expected to take place in a number of locations around the world. In the end, production lasted six months and spread across three continents and six countries. A variety of places stand for the local where the true story takes place. For example, scenes made in Yemen were filmed in Morocco, and air travel images and drones from the Pakistani landscape were used to raise Afghanistan. Johannesburg, South Africa serves as a production base, and where most of the filming takes place. The city has "visual variations" sought by producers, and is duplicated for various places including Nairobi, Tanzania, Britain, Albania, and Las Vegas, Nevada. While there was an early push to shoot all production in South Africa, Zisk argued to film the back half of Morocco. In August 2017, the filming took place at River Cafà ©  in Brooklyn.
Production designer Lester Cohen credited Wright and Gibney's contact list and production research team to enable him to gather the materials needed to re-create the various settings. During the design period, the set of dressers shared a photo of his tour in Afghanistan and the daughter of an art co-ordinator plunged into a newspaper archive in Nairobi to help recreate the bombing site of the 1998 embassy attack. The details informed the design of a large debris pile that closed the central business district at Cape Town for weeks. Also, as many of the stories that occurred in the United States occurred in offices, practical devices were built, including the Alec Station and the FBI office in New York.
Maps The Looming Tower (miniseries)
Release
Marketing
On December 19, 2017, Hulu released the first preview of the series through a collection of "first-view" pictures and videos featuring interviews with cast and crew. On January 11, 2018, Hulu released the first official footage for this series.
Premiere
On February 13, 2018, The Washington Post hosted the first episode. After the screening, journalist David Ignatius moderated a question-and-answer session with Jeff Daniels, Tahar Rahim, Peter Sarsgaard and Wrenn Schmidt, Dan Futterman, Alex Gibney, Lawrence Wright, and Ali Soufan.
On February 15, 2018, the series held its inaugural show at The Paris Theater in New York City.
On February 20, 2018, the series held its international premiere during the Berlin International Film Festival at the Zoo Palast cinema in Berlin.
On February 27, 2018, the LBJ Presidency Library held the first episode. After the screening, LBJ Foundation President Mark K. Updegrove moderated a question-and-answer session with Lawrence Wright, Michael Stuhlbarg and Ali Soufan.
On May 1, 2018, episodes one and two were screened during the Festival Mania Series at the cinema Le Majestic in Lille, France. It appeared along with seven other television programs in the series of "Best of USA" festivals.
Distribution
In all regions outside the United States, this series is distributed by Amazon Video. The series aired on March 1, 2018, in the United Kingdom and the next episode was released every week for the next seven weeks. In Germany and Austria, the series airs on March 9, 2018.
Home media
The Looming Tower will be released on Blu-ray and DVD on September 18, 2018. This device includes four behind-the-scenes features and audio commentary on premiere and finale episodes.
Reception
The Looming Tower was greeted with a positive response from critics. On the review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, this series holds a 96% approval rating with an average rating of 7.59 out of 10 based on 47 reviews. The crucial consensus of this website reads, "Acting well and strongly written, the Looming Tower provides a gripping anti-terrorism drama that makes it more effective through its roots in real-life events." Metacritic, who uses a weighted average, commissioned a 74 score series of 100 on 25 criticisms, showing "generally favorable reviews."
The Washington Post ' Hank Stuever praised the show for its "compelling speed and tenor" and that "Tahar Rahim gave a smart and sincere show like Ali Soufan, a Muslim American Agent in the O'Neill squad. " The Hollywood Reporter ' s Daniel Fienberg offers a series of compliments that say," The Looming Tower demands a hasty combination of faith -finders in a fairy tale and half-forgotten about Absen's history, this series is basically like a good, brilliant, fast-moving season from the Fatherland , which is better than the actual season Fatherland . "In a positive review, Maureen Ryan said the show was" an easily accessible and shiny series that does not shrink the small and tragic elements of this story. " Daniel D'Addario praised the show as "a gripping and relevant series." This worked, with a project that rocked the years before September 11 and told the story ironic about government eloquence. "In a more negative review, Chris Cabin criticized the series calling it" a heavy didactic act, an attempt to deny the facts as insight and character which is less than the number of their intellect, rather than plagiarizing complicated personalities and a ridiculous counting contest that led to Al-Qaeda's biggest terrorist attack in American history, Gibney, Wright, and other creative teams steeped in personal drama to a little more than a series arguments and discussions in offices in various volumes. "
Potential sequel
It has been reported that if the limited series proves successful enough, then the sequel series may be ordered. Initial discussions among producers have begun, with their concepts revolving around the birth of the Muslim Brotherhood.
See also
- The original program list is distributed by Hulu
References
External links
- Official website
- The production site
- Tower Soars on IMDb
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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