Armando Iannucci, the Emmy-winning British showrunner behind HBO‘s Veep and Avenue 5, has revealed that he has struggled to raise funding for a Donald Trump project amid fears of MAGA retribution.
Speaking at a Creative UK event on the fringes of the Labour Party Conference in Liverpool, Iannucci revealed that he was developing a screen project based on Trump’s speeches, but was warned that he would not be able to pull together finance in America.
Iannucci paraphrased his conversations with U.S. buyers: “I got a lot of, ‘Yeah, you wouldn’t get the money for that at the moment, I’m afraid.’ So I said, ‘Why not?’ [They replied] ‘Well, you know, if you want what comes with it…’”
He added: “[I’ve been] talking to journalists out there who say, ‘If you’re on the list, your life is made miserable.’ [The message was], the inland revenue will come calling, you better lawyer up, you will spend the next four years just weighed down by legal issues you have to get through.”
Iannucci is the latest satirist to speak out about the chilling effect on free speech in comedy following ABC’s brief suspension of Jimmy Kimmel after Brendan Carr’s threats, as well as Paramount’s decision to cancel Stephen Colbert.
Iannucci, who was in conversation with Channel 4 News presenter Krishnan Guru-Murthy, said he had not abandoned the Trump project (he did not specify if it was a TV series or film), saying he could look to get it off the ground without American money. “Let’s see what happens,” he added.
The In the Loop writer said that film projects in the UK are stalling because of Trump’s renewed threat to slap them with tariffs. “Nobody knows how it works, but that’s not the point. The point is, there will be financiers in America about to give money to a project going, ‘Do you know what? Let’s just see how this plays out before I hand that over.’ And so you’ll have another project sitting there,” Iannucci said.
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