NBC Developing TV Series Based on SCOTUSblog’s Tom Goldstein
NBC is developing a TV series based on the life of SCOTUSblog founder Tom Goldstein.
Press reports say the show will be called Tommy Supreme, but Goldstein says that’s likely just a working title, according to Washingtonian’s Capital Comment Blog.
“It makes no sense, so I’m sure it will change,” Goldstein told the blog. “It can’t possibly be real.”
Variety also had the news, saying the show will be an “inverse House,” depicting a likable guy in an unlikable profession. Writers are working on the pilot.
Goldstein, named a legal rebel by the ABA Journal, told the magazine that the show is a legal drama/comedy about his early years of Supreme Court practice.
Goldstein was a fourth-year lawyer at Boies, Schiller & Flexner when he decided he wanted to pursue a Supreme Court practice, Capital Comment says. He quit the law firm and worked at home as he looked for cases likely to make it to the high court, volunteering to represent litigants for free.
Now Goldstein is an appellate litigator with Akin Gump who has argued 21 Supreme Court cases. He told the ABA Journal he spends about $150,000 a year of his own money to fund SCOTUSblog, staffed by eight lawyers and researchers, including former Baltimore Sun Supreme Court reporter Lyle Denniston. Goldstein is also said to be a formidable poker player.
Goldstein told Capital Comment that the idea for the series struck him as “both flattering and crazy” when he was first approached two years ago. “My life isn’t the stuff of dramatic television, as I’ve experienced it,” he said.
