With a slate of programming that already boasts two of the biggest shows on television — "Game Of Thrones" and "Boardwalk Empire" — HBO is not slowing down for a minute in 2012. This past weekend they finally unveiled the hotly buzzed Lena Dunham series "Girls," and this weekend Armando Iannucci's "Veep" will debut as well. But that's not all. This summer, the network will welcome Aaron Sorkin back to TV, unspooling his latest "The Newsroom," and Vanity Fair has provided the first look at the entire cast photographed by none other than Annie Leibovitz.
"The Newsroom" stars Jeff Daniels as the cynical news anchor Will McAvoy, who balances navigates a career and personal life that includes executive producer and former lover Mackenzie MacHale (Emily Mortimer), network president Charlie Skinner (Sam Waterston) and the CEO of the network's parent company, Leona Lansing (Jane Fonda). A host of excellent players round out the cast including Dev Patel, Alison Pill, Oliva Munn and more, in what looks like another sharp look at the kind of behind-the-scenes drama Sorkin specializes in (check out the trailer for show right here in case you missed it).
And Sorkin is glad to be back on the small screen, even if it requires a more rigorous work ethic than the comparatively langurous development process for feature films. “I love television,” Sorkin tells the magazine. “I love putting on a show every week. I love coming to work with the same people every week. I love the immediacy of it. But the price that you pay for all that is the ferocity of the schedule. We have to make a one-hour movie every nine days. So I have to write a one-hour movie every nine days. You’re writing an episode, you’re shooting an episode, and one is in postproduction while another is in pre-production, casting, and scouting. It becomes a little bit like a MASH unit.”
Either way, we're very excited to see what he has pulled together. "The Newsroom" premieres on June 24th, and we'll be there.
