Laura Dern to star in Epstein investigation limited series from Adam McKay

Laura Dern is taking on the Jeffrey Epstein investigation, in a new limited series executive produced by Adam McKay based on journalist Julie K Brown’s work busting open the story.Dern will play Brown, the Miami Herald investigative reporter on the late, disgraced financier’s tail when no one else was, for the first scripted take on the Epstein case. The screenplay will be based on Brown’s 2021 book Perversion of Injustice: The Jeffrey Epstein Story. Sharon Hoffman, a writer on the 2020 limited series Mrs America, will write the project and serve as co-showrunner with Eileen Myers (The Night Agent, Masters of Sex). McKay, the writer-director of Don’t Look Up and executive producer on the HBO juggernaut Succession, among other credits, will serve as executive producer alongside Dern and Brown.The as-yet untitled series from Sony Pictures TV will provide “an explosive account of an investigative reporter exposing the secret plea deal between Epstein and federal prosecutors”, according to a logline from Sony. “Drawing from Brown’s experience as a groundbreaking reporter for the Miami Herald, the book and the limited series follow her relentless, years-long investigation that identified 80 victims, persuaded key survivors to go on the record, and led to Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s arrests.”Brown’s reporting was crucial to bringing public attention on Epstein, who was convicted of sex trafficking in Florida in 2008. In November 2018, the Miami Herald published her three-part series detailing the cozy relationship between prosecutors and Epstein’s lawyers, and the many rich and powerful people who allegedly turned a blind eye turned to Epstein’s abuses of women and girls. The series, based on interviews with 60 women who claimed to be victims of abuse, brought Epstein’s crimes back into the public consciousness, leading to sex-trafficking charges.The series also led to the resignation of Trump’s then labor secretary Alex Acosta. In the mid-2000s, as the US attorney for Florida’s southern district, Acosta signed off on a non-prosecution agreement that blocked any federal charges from Epstein’s first criminal case. Instead, Epstein pleaded guilty to state charges.Fallout from Brown’s work continues to play out spectacularly in the US, where the justice department still faces calls to release all its documents on Epstein – including his formerly close friendship with Trump – and abroad. In February, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, whose close association with Epstein led to the stripping of the title Prince Andrew, was arrested in England for possible misconduct as trade envoy for the UK. The arrest followed the disclosure of emails exchanged with Epstein.Epstein died in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal charges of sex-trafficking minors. He remains a disgraced figure haunting the Trump presidency, though no allegations against Trump have been substantiated.The series is still seeking a buyer, and is yet to go into production.