Matthew Rhys in Talks with Netflix to Star in Adaptation of Robert Caro's THE POWER BROKER
Netflix is in talks with actor Matthew Rhys (The Americans, Perry Mason) to bring Robert Caro’s The Power Broker, the seminal 1974 biography of New York urban planner Robert Moses, to the screen for its first adaptation. The actor, who is starring as legendary Welsh actor Richard Burton in The Old Vic production of one-man show Playing Burton, revealed the news on the SiriusXM podcast Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend.
The plan is for Rhys to star as Moses in the project. It’s not clear whether it would be for film or TV, but given the size of the 1,344-page book, it would make more sense as a multi-part series.
Rhys said of the project, “There is a select group of us who have approached a very well-known streaming platform. But at the moment, dear Mr. Caro, he doesn’t have an issue with handing over the rights to The Power Broker. The agencies and publishing houses do. So at the moment, it’s in this stalemate whereby I know the Flix called Net are trying to acquire the rights to The Power Broker. It’s been pitched. They do want to do it.”
The Power Broker, originally published by Knopf, which is a division of Penguin Random House, is widely considered one of the greatest books of the twentieth century. In 2011, Oliver Stone was attached to direct a film based on the book for HBO with James Gandolfini and Peter Guber exec producing but it did not make it to screen.
The book explores how Robert Moses was the single most powerful man of his time in the City and in the State of New York. It highlights how things really get done in America’s City Halls and Statehouses and brings to light information about national figures as Alfred E. Smith and Franklin D. Roosevelt, Fiorello La Guardia, John V. Lindsay and Nelson Rockefeller.
It tells the story of how Moses created a miraculous flowering of parks and parkways, playlands and beaches before bringing in miles of highway, the sprawl of Long Island, and public housing.
Per the description of the book: Moses was held in fear—his dossiers could disgorge the dark secret of anyone who opposed him. He was, he claimed, above politics, above deals; and through decade after decade, the newspapers and the public believed.
Meanwhile, he was developing his public authorities into a fourth branch of government known as Triborough—a government whose records were closed to the public, whose policies and plans were decided not by voters or elected officials but solely by Moses—an immense economic force directing pressure on labor unions, on banks, on all the city’s political and economic institutions, and on the press, and on the Church.
He doled out millions of dollars’ worth of legal fees, insurance commissions, lucrative contracts on the basis of who could best pay him back in the only coin he coveted: power. He dominated the politics and politicians of his time—without ever having been elected to any office.
Rhys is currently starring in the limited Netflix series The Beast In Me.
via: Deadline