Yahoo Finance Des writer to make major TV series about the News of the World phone-hacking scandal
The story of the 2011 News International phone-hacking scandal is being made into a new TV drama from the writer of Des, Luke Neal.
The scandal led to the closure of the high-selling tabloid newspaper News of the World, and to the arrest and conviction of the paper’s former editor Andy Coulson.
Entitled Thank You & Goodbye (after the final headline printed by the paper), the drama series is being produced by Emmy winner Teddy Leifer, and Saul Dibb, director of The Salisbury Poisonings, is also involved.
The producers describe the project as an “epic story of criminal practice deployed on an industrial scale that becomes a powerful tale of redemption”.
In 2011, it was revealed that the News of the World had hired a private investigator who hacked the voicemail of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler.
The scandal led to a number of arrests, the resignation of Metropolitan Police commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson, and an extensive public inquiry into press ethics.
News International (now News UK) director Rupert Murdoch was also summoned to give evidence in the public hearing.
Neal said: “I am thrilled to collaborate with Saul and [production company] Rise Films to create a series about what I consider to be one of the most important moral crossroads of our generation.”
“I believe by exploring – without judgement or sensationalism – the human nature of the people who contributed to this gross abuse of power, and trying to understand how and why they did this, is the only true way to stop this happening it again.”
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