Facebook Series ‘Doomsday Machine,’ Starring Claire Foy, Lands at HBO

Following a multiple-outlet bidding war, the Facebook TV series starring The Crown Emmy winner Claire Foy has landed at HBO.

The WarnerMedia-backed premium cable network has landed Doomsday Machine with a development deal for the limited series that is based on the book An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook’s Battle for Domination. The drama is a co-production between HBO and Anonymous Content and CAA-backed Wiip.

Foy will star as Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg. As opposed to Aaron Sorkin’s The Social Network, Doomsday Machine is the “riveting human drama chronicling the political and social minefields Facebook has navigated on its relentless quest for growth. The series places us in the shoes of Sheryl Sandberg (Foy) and Mark Zuckerberg, who are shaping the way that billions of people around the world communicate and consume information,” per HBO. (Sorkin, meanwhile, recently told THR that he has ideas for a possible sequel to The Social Network.)

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First announced in October before it was shopped to premium cable networks and streamers, the series is based on New York Times duo Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang’s book An Ugly Truth. The limited series is also built around the pair’s reporting as well as that of The New Yorker’s Andrew Marantz. Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and author Ayad Akhtar (Homeland Elegies) is expected to pen the series and exec produces alongside Wiip’s Paul Lee and Josh Stern, Anonymous Content’s David Levine and Doug Wald, Adam Berkowitz, Elyse Cheney and Adam Eaglin. Marantz is attached as a consultant.

Foy, who also exec produces, has earned two Emmy wins for her role as the young Queen Elizabeth on Netflix’s The Crown. She next has Amazon’s A Very English Scandal and feature Women Talking due this year. She’s with UTA and Independent Talent Group.

An Ugly Truth joins an HBO scripted roster that also includes such upcoming limited series as Gorilla and the Bird, Irma Vep, Lake Success, The Son, The Time Traveler’s Wife, The White House Plumbers and an untitled Jeffrey Epstein show from Succession’s Adam McKay. In terms of other topical content, HBO is also working on a GameStop movie.

Puck’s Matt Belloni was first to report the project selling to HBO.