WBD cablenet TNT gets back into scripted with Saddam Hussein miniseries

TNT has picked up spin-off series The Librarians: The Next Chapter

Warner Bros Discovery (WBD)-owned US cable network TNT has ordered a miniseries about former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, marking the channel’s first scripted commission since post-merger restructuring began at its parent company in 2022.

Debriefing the President (working title) is a four-parter following the 2003 interrogation of Hussein from the perspective of CIA analyst John Nixon.

The greenlight, first reported by Deadline, comes as the cablenet looks to begin rebuilding its scripted slate, with TNT also acquiring the first season of The Librarians spin-off The Librarians: The Next Chapter and commissioning a second season.

The show, produced by Dean Devlin’s Electric Entertainment, was initially greenlit by The CW but dropped this month as the US broadcaster continues to pivot away from scripted under Nexstar Media Group, which took over majority ownership of the network from WBD and Paramount Global in 2022.

Devlin is showrunner and executive producer of the spin-off alongside Marc Roskin and Rachel Olschan-Wilson of Electric Entertainment, with Electric also handling international sales. The original iteration of The Librarians ran for four seasons on TNT from 2014 to 2018.

The orders mark the first scripted greenlights from TNT since 2022, when the network began culling its slate of comedies and dramas in the aftermath of the merger of WarnerMedia and Discovery.

This month, WBD announced that its chairman and CEO of US networks, Kathleen Finch, will retire at the end of the year, with Warner Bros Television Group chairman and CEO Channing Dungey assuming oversight of the group.

The announcement of Finch’s impending retirement came on the heels of WBD taking a mammoth US$9.1bn write-down on the value of its cable networks.