Grab your kite and bifocals: Michael Douglas to play Benjamin Franklin on Apple TV Plus series
The series will be about his eight-year diplomatic mission to France
Watch out, Andy Daly: Your one-episode role on The Office may soon no longer be the definitive pop culture portrayal of Benjamin Franklin. That’s because Apple has just announced that Michael Douglas, best known these days as Hank Pym in the Marvel movies and the guy they cut to at awards shows when they talk about something called The Kominsky Method, has signed on to play the founding father for a limited series on Apple TV+.
The show doesn’t have a title yet, but it’s coming from John Adams’ Kirk Ellis and will be directed by Tim Van Patten (The Sopranos), so any additional information is superfluous. This thing is going to get some nominations no matter what it’s called with a pedigree like that. But if you absolutely need more information, a press release from Apple says it will be about Franklin’s dealings in France, when—“without any diplomatic training”—he convinced the monarchy to “underwrite America’s experiment in democracy.”
The press release adds that this eight-year mission “stands as Franklin’s most vital service to his country, without which America would not have won the Revolution,” and he did it while having sex-filled adventures throughout Europe! How many other Americans can say the same about whatever service they’ve done for this country?
As for Douglas, he seems to have aged into the sweet spot for playing older Americans involved in important diplomatic missions. In addition to playing Franklin, he’s still attached to play Ronald Reagan for a limited series about the 1986 Reykjavík Summit in which the U.S. President and Soviet General Secreatary Mikhail Gorbachev discussed how to bring about the end of the Cold War. Christoph Waltz was attached to play Gorbachev, but we haven’t heard about this project in a year. It’ll be interesting to see if… current events impact its viability.