'The Offer': Armie Hammer To Star In Paramount+ Show About Making 'The Godfather'
Apparently, someone just made Armie Hammer an offer he couldn't refuse.
That offer: to play producer Al Ruddy in The Offer, an upcoming television series about the making of Francis Ford Coppola's cinematic classic The Godfather. The show is aiming to be one of the big titles for the streaming service Paramount+, which is soon being rebranded from its current name, CBS All Access. Get more info about Armie Hammer in The Offer below.
Deadline reports that Hammer (The Social Network, The Lone Ranger, Rebecca) has been cast as Al Ruddy in The Offer, a 10-episode limited event series that's supposed to be one of the signature shows of ViacomCBS's new Paramount+. Ruddy has apparently kept several stories about the making of The Godfather to himself over the years, and this show is going to be based on those never-before-revealed experiences.
We actually interviewed Ruddy earlier this year, and while the entire conversation is well worth your time, I wanted to highlight this little excerpt of Ruddy describing how he got the job as the producer of The Godfather. It starts with Charlie Bluhdorn, who owned Paramount's parent company, bursting into an office meeting and asking Ruddy point blank how he would approach making this movie:
"I looked at this crazy f***ing guy and I said to myself: if I start talking about the book, I'll be toast. This guy was focused on giving me one minute of time and he was gone, right? So I looked at him and I said to him, 'Charlie, I want to make an ice blue terrifying movie about people you love.'"
That did the trick, and he went on to win an Oscar for his work producing the movie. Ruddy will executive produce this series, which is being written and executive produced by Michael Tolkin (Escape at Dannemora and The Player).
On a surface level, this is probably one of the least interesting casting bits we're likely to learn about this event series, simply because Ruddy is not nearly as iconic or instantly identifiable as several of the other major players involved in the making of the film, many of whom will be depicted here. We're still waiting to see who will eventually step into the roles of Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, Robert Duvall, Talia Shire, and Diane Keaton, and those will probably be the ones that folks have strong opinions about in advance because we can imagine the comparison. But Hammer can be exceptional with the right material (see: Call Me By Your Name, Sorry to Bother You), so hopefully he's a good fit for this project.