State of Play (film) - Production

Production

The mini-television series was written by Paul Abbott and aired on British television channel BBC One in May–June 2003 and on BBC America in April 2004. Abbott was initially reluctant to sell the film rights to State of Play, fearing a compressed version of his mini-series would be unworkable, but in May 2004 a seven-figure Paramount Pictures-backed bid led by producer Scott Rudin was accepted. The bid prevailed over an offer from Andrew Hauptman's Mission Pictures (backed by Warner Bros.), but the deal fell through before completion. After a second bidding war, Mission acquired the rights for Universal Pictures in December 2004.

Director Kevin Macdonald had long been attached to the project, though an early report suggested screenwriter Matthew Michael Carnahan was set to make the film his directorial debut. Macdonald was a fan of the original mini-series, and said it would be a "hard act to follow". He said it was the blend of fiction and the topical subjects of journalism and politics that attracted him to the project, adding that he wanted to examine the ways in which American and European societies learn what is going on in the world, and to what degree newspapers and the nightly news could be trusted. He said that in an age when people read fewer newspapers, he wanted to explore the necessity for reliable information and the threat to the journalistic profession from collusion between reporters and politicians, and that the film would " questions of how independent the press is, how much real investigating is conducted, and how much is taken on faith from lobbyists or PR sheets." Macdonald cited the films of the 1970s, All the President's Men in particular, as major influences, saying that while he was scared of comparisons with the film account of the Watergate scandal, State of Play would primarily be a piece of entertainment.

According to Carnahan, the story's core issue (and main factor behind his desire to write the adaptation) was the question it raised about whether a person would be justified in doing "a pretty awful thing" if they were performing great deeds in other areas of their life. Carnahan began working on revisions to his script with Macdonald, but the process was disrupted when Carnahan's daughter fell ill. When he chose to concentrate his time on his family, the task was handed to Bourne film series screenwriter Tony Gilroy, who performed a small rewrite based upon Carnahan's notes. Further rewrites were carried out by The Queen screenwriter Peter Morgan and Shattered Glass writer/director Billy Ray.

The film was made for Universal Pictures by Working Title Films. Eric Fellner and Tim Bevan produced for Working Title, alongside E. Bennett Walsh, and Andell Entertainment's Andrew Hauptman and Eric Hayes. Paul Abbott executive produced alongside Liza Chasin and Debra Hayward. Kristen Lowe and Maradith Frenkel were overseers for the studio. State of Play was to be released in the United States towards the end of 2008, but the delayed start to production saw the date changed to April 17, 2009. State of Play was released in the United Kingdom on April 24, 2009, and was released in Australia on May 28, 2009.