Hulu Sets Jeff Daniels & Alec Baldwin As Stars Of Controversial 9/11 Drama, The Looming Tower

30 Rock star Alec Baldwin has (re)made a name for himself playing President Donald Trump on Saturday Night Live. His performance has received rave reviews from nearly everyone except the Chief Executive who has given a near running commentary of his performances on twitter.

Alec Baldwin is set to take on a new big name according to Deadline.com – and a much more serious one – former CIA Director George Tenet in a ten episode Hulu adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize winning book The Looming Tower. When the book was published in 2006, it drew incredible controversy but just as much praise. The NY Times called it “remarkable” summarizing it this way: “Mr. Wright’s book, based on more than 500 interviews — ranging from Mr. bin Laden’s best friend in college, Jamal Khalifa, to Yosri Fouda, a reporter for Al Jazeera, to Richard A. Clarke, the former White House counterterrorism chief — gives the reader a searing view of the tragic events of Sept. 11, 2001, a view that is at once wrenchingly intimate and boldly sweeping in its historical perspective.

It’s not the first time that Baldwin has played a member of the CIA, he made one of his big breakout roles as Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan in The Hunt for Red October and again when he starred as the head of the CIA in Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation. Baldwin has always been a controversial, but popular actor having run ins with paparazzi and as a well known liberal donor so taking on this role as a Bush Administration appointee will certainly be interesting.

Also starring will be The Newsrooms’ Jeff Daniels as John O’Neill. O’Neill was a counter-terrorism expert calling on the CIA and White House to pay more attention to the threat of Osama bin laden. If you’ve watched the excellent PBS Frontline documentary on O’Neill’s career called The Man Who Knew, you’d know this is a perfect casting.

Already announced is Wrenn Schmidt of Outcast, Peter Sarsgaard of The Magnificent Seven and A Prophet’s Tahar Rahim. The series is produced by Dan Futterman and documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney.