In Rare Union, Documentary Finds Itself on NBC

LOS ANGELES, July 28—Early this year a group of struggling documentary filmmakers who had just completed a film about capital punishment borrowed money from family and friends and used frequent flier miles to buy plane tickets to Park City, Utah, to enter the Sundance Film Festival.

Katy Chevigny, the co-director and co-producer of the film, “Deadline,” said, “We tried to make the best film we could, but we actually didn’t know if anybody would ever see the film outside of Sundance.”

Ms. Chevigny and her colleagues don’t have to worry.

In a highly unusual move for a broadcast network, NBC has purchased the two-hour documentary for an undisclosed price and will present it on Friday on “Dateline NBC.” Although HBO and other cable networks buy documentaries at film festivals like Sundance, it is rare for a broadcast network like NBC to buy a documentary and present it in its entirety, because these networks have news units themselves. The filmmakers said that about 10 minutes of the documentary had been trimmed, mostly to make room for commercials.

What makes the current documentary perhaps even more unusual is that it was purchased at the behest of Robert Wright, now chairman and chief executive of NBC Universal.

For the full article please visit The New York Times. For more information about the film, please visit the Deadline website.

PUBLISHED IN:

The New York Times

WRITTEN BY:

Bernard Weinraub

PUBLISHED ON:

July 29, 2004

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