Today in “We don’t want to see this, but we also kind of do want to see this, if we’re being honest with ourselvs” news: Michael Douglas is gearing up to play fellow thespian and Call Of Duty: Black Ops Cold War star Ronald Reagan for a Paramount TV limited series. Douglas—whose impression game pretty inarguably peaked with his (genuinely fantastic) turn as Liberace in 2013's Behind The Candelabra—will play ol’ Ronny at arguably the height of his career running the known world, the 1986 Reykjavík Summit with the Soviet Union’s Mikhail Gorbachev that helped lay the groundwork for the conclusion of the Cold War.
And who’ll be playing the Soviet General Secretary? None other than unrestrained accent user Christoph Waltz, who will presumably turn the Russian leader into a truly fascinating series of fun actors’ quirks. (We kid, we kid.) The series will be directed by James Foley, lately of House Of Cards, Billions, and two out of three Fifty Shades movies, and still probably best known for directing films like the 1992 version of Glengarry Glen Ross. Foley will be working from a book about the Summit penned by Reagan’s old arms control director Ken Adelman, helping to bring the drama, tension, and god-it’s-going-to-be-so-many-wigs-and-birthmarks vibe of Reagan & Gorbachev to life.
No word yet on what network or streaming service the limited series might ultimately land at; Paramount’s had success on all the major services, with shows on Apple TV+, Netflix, Amazon, HBO Max, and more.