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Nine plots drama on Shane Warne

Nine miniseries on late cricketing great, revives an idea Seven once announced but which never surfaced.

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Nine is planning a miniseries on the life of cricketer Shane Warne, who died earlier this month from a heart attack at the age of 52.

Nine’s head of drama, Andy Ryan, has told the Sydney Morning Herald, “Warnie’s life was so full of drama, like the man himself. This miniseries will be larger than life – entertaining, confronting, thought-provoking.

“We want to explore what made Warnie so special, and why he had such a powerful effect on people. He was a sporting legend, a national treasure, international kind of icon, but he was also a larrikin, a rogue and a charmer and a flawed man. The national outpouring of grief over his passing had shown us – if we needed telling – just what a sort of impact he’s had on the national conversation.”

It’s not the first time a Shane Warne miniseries has been proposed.

In 2016 Seven announced a Warnie miniseries for 2017 by Screentime.

Seven West Media then-CEO Tim Worner said, “We’re really looking forward to it. It’s very early days with the first draft of a treatment. So we’re at a point where we will know soon, after that work’s completed, whether or not we need 2 actors to play Young Shane or ‘Older and Wiser Shane.’”

The project never surfaced … it isn’t clear if Nine’s is related.

In 2008, Eddie Perfect musical Shane Warne: The Musical was well-received by critics and attended by Warne himself.

11 Responses

  1. So many high horses, so little time.

    Didn’t everybody lap up news specials and hastily cobbled together clip shows when Bert Newton passed away?

    I’m sure if Nine announced a similar miniseries for Moonface you’d all be in.

  2. No susprises here …. anything for ratings. TV exectutives (who are more likely under 45) are like vultures circling a carcass. What a cutthroat industry to work in.

  3. The funeral was literally yesterday…typical of Australian media though trying to cash in on someone. How much more out of touch can you get! Thank god I deleted 9 from my TV years ago.

    1. They all do, and they constantly update them. In 1993 a Sky News (UK) staff member overheard something which was not for broadcast and misunderstood what was going on. The employee phoned his mother in Australia and told her the Queen Mother had died. His mother called her local Australian radio station which broadcast the news, which was then picked up by a national Australian TV station. The false report was broadcast to thousands of Australian viewers by Seven.
      ″The fact that any news organization could carry a story of this magnitude without corroboration is lamentable journalism,″ said Ian Frykberg of Sky News, referring to the Australian television’s broadcast. Channel Seven in Sydney apologized within minutes after realizing its mistake. (AP). Sky UK was merely updating their obit on the Queen Mother in 1993. She died in 2002.

  6. As a mark of respect for Shane Warne and his family I will not give this the time of day ,I will watch a proper documentary on him but that is it.

  7. I thought the next Underbelly series dramatising Melissa Caddick’s death was a bit too soon, but this???
    Unless it was in the pipeline and greenlighted long before his death (which I don’t think is the case because we would have heard about it here at TVT), let his family and public grieve before any biopics come out.

  8. Not too sure how I feel about this.
    It definitely comes across as more as capitalising on his death/the moment for ratings. Apart from sevens attempt, did not even care before his death? Guess we will never know.

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