Reminding us all that any week can be Cold War Week as long as we keep the spirit of paranoia, jingoism, and the fear of sudden human extinction alive in our hearts, Showtime has announced that it’s working on a limited series based on the Cuban Missile Crisis. According to Deadline, the series—based on James Blight and Janet M. Lang’s nonfiction book The Armageddon Letters—will be written and directed by Phil Alden Robinson, whose 2002 Tom Clancy adaptation The Sum Of All Fears featured the nuclear destruction of Baltimore as part of its plot.
Lang and Blight’s book is based on 43 letters sent between John F. Kennedy, Nikita Krushchev, and Fidel Castro in 1962, in which the three men whiled away the breezy summer months trying not to goad the other two into kicking off the end of the world. (Spoilers for those who haven’t read the book: they managed to pull it off.) Shutter Island producer Mike Medavoy and The Godfather’s Albert S. Ruddy have signed on to produce the series, which will air in four one-hour installments on the premium cable network.