Above: George Bush and Enron's Kenneth Lay
hough
the plot has not nearly been unraveled yet, the Enron
scandal will become a television movie on the cable channel F/X. Several books
are in the works, too.
F/X announced yesterday that it was planning a two-hour film based on the people and events involved in the collapse of the Texas- based energy corporation. F/X, a unit of the News Corporation, has hired Artisan Pictures, an independent company, to develop the movie.
No writer has yet been hired to try to turn the convoluted story into a script. The chief executive of Artisan, Bob Cooper, acknowledged that finding a way to translate the "layers and layers" of Enron's entanglements into dramatic form will be a challenge, but, he said, "I think Enron is a great example of the different kind of movie that can be made if you look at it in a different way."
Mr. Cooper said it would probably take "no less than a year" to have a script ready and it might be as long as two years before a film was actually finished.
Book publishers have also wasted no time signing up books about Enron's collapse. PublicAffairs, part of the Perseus Books Group, signed Robert Bryce, a journalist, to write a book about the company even before it filed for bankruptcy protection. Also last fall, John Wiley & Sons signed a journalist, Loren Fox, to write another Enron book. A group of reporters for Fortune magazine, including Joseph Nocera, are expected to announce today an agreement with a publisher to write another account.
In perhaps the most intriguing deal, Doubleday Broadway, part of the Random House division of Bertelsmann, will publish a book by Mimi Swartz, a journalist who may have the full cooperation of Sherron S. Watkins, the Enron executive who wrote a memo warning of the company's perilous accounting tactics. Ms. Schwartz has spoken with Ms. Watkins, but Stephen Rubin, publisher of Doubleday Broadway, said only that Ms. Watkins might contribute. If that happens, Ms. Watkins would not begin work on the book until she has testified before Congress.
The PublicAffairs book may be published as soon as this fall. It is undetermined when the other books will be published.
- NY Times