Less than a day after Arnold Schwarzenegger captured the governorship of California, the A&E cable channel announced that it will begin production on a television movie called "See Arnold Run."
The movie will trace what its creators call the parallels between Schwarzenegger's race for governor and his effort in 1973 to capture the Olympia bodybuilding title. The movie is expected to have its premiere next summer, around the time of the Republican National Convention.
"We see this as a real personification of the American dream," A&E Executive Vice President Abbe Raven said. "It's a great immigrant story of someone, against all odds, achieving his ambitions."
But Raven said the film will also deal with the allegations of inappropriate sexual behavior that dogged Schwarzenegger late in the campaign. "We will look at him as the full person, his pluses and his minuses," Raven said.
"We will rely on news reports," she said. "The beauty of this is a lot of it has played out already."
For A&E, best-known for its "Biography" series of documentaries, "See Arnold Run" is part of a shift in strategy designed to attract younger viewers by producing films about contemporary figures. The channel, which also plans a film about Hillary Clinton, commissioned a script on Schwarzenegger as soon as he announced he was running, Raven said.
Casting has not begun, and Raven declined to speculate on who might be asked to star. But another executive involved in the production said some names being tossed around include film stars Viggo Mortensen and Willem Dafoe, and Billy Campbell, star of the now-canceled ABC series "Once and Again."