Robert De Niro is eyeing the first TV lead role of his storied career.
The Oscar winner is attached to star in a Netflix limited series called Zero Day from Narcos showrunner Eric Newman and Noah Oppenheim, the president of NBC News. Details are being kept close to the vest, but the project is said to be a political thriller in which De Niro will play a former president.
Netflix declined comment.
Newman and Oppenheim will pen a script from a story by Newman, Oppenheim and Michael Schmidt. Newman, who has an overall deal at Netflix, and Oppenheim will executive produce with De Niro and Jonathan Glickman of Panoramic Media.
Should Zero Day get a green light, it will mark the first ongoing series role in De Niro’s career. He scored an Emmy nomination in 2017 for playing Bernie Madoff in HBO’s movie The Wizard of Lies and has made a handful of guest appearances on Saturday Night Live and Extras. He’s repped by CAA, Grubman Shire and RMG.
In addition to Narcos and Narcos: Mexico, Newman is an executive producer of Netflix’s The Watcher and True Story as well as the upcoming Painkiller and Griselda. He’s with CAA, Hansen Jacobson and Rowe PR.
Oppenheim became president of NBC News in 2017; prior to that, he was the executive in charge of Today at NBC. He has written screenplays for Jackie, Allegiant and The Maze Runner and was an executive producer of NBC’s miniseries The Thing About Pam, which was based on a series of Dateline stories. He is repped by CAA and Entertainment 360.
Variety first reported the news.
