Alex Gibney’s ‘Zero Days’ to Become Drama Series
Alex Gibney will turn his documentary “Zero Days” into a fictionalized drama series, TheWrap has learned.
The first season will a be thriller about what happens when a self-replicating computer virus, developed by the West to disable and destroy nuclear facilities in the Middle East, starts to spread beyond its intended targets, threatening the very security of those it was intended to protect.
The Stuxnet virus, as depicted in “Zero Days,” was specifically designed to target PLCs, which are essentially small computers attached to major pieces of physical infrastructure: bridges, water plants, electrical grids, etc.
Hacking them could allow a bad actor to effectively shut down an entire city or more in a single stroke, and with Stuxnet’s release, the U.S., and especially Israel (both of whom apparently released the virus into the world without their allies’ consent), have sent a signal to the world that cyberattacks are a legitimate form of (cold) warfare.
The show will be a Carnival production in association with Participant Media, which produced “Zero Days” with Gibney and Shmuger, distributed by NBCUniversal International Distribution.
Gibney is represented by UTA, Stephen Schiff by ICM Partners with Industry Entertainment and Marc Shmuger by Verve.