“We felt that Albert Einstein was perfect to launch the series because as much as people know about him, that’s a snapshot, an impression, an image,” Howard told me. “His life is so full of drama. You could not pack his life into a movie. It was reductive and now we get to share it in a compelling and engaging way.”
A feature film had been executive producer Gigi Pritzker’s original goal when she optioned Walter Isaacson’s book Einstein: His Life and Universe. After years of searching for the right script, however, she realized it needed to be serialized -- and presented in a way that found the humor, the adventure and the passion behind the physicist’s life.
“There will be people who say, ‘Yeah, it sounds dry and boring,’” Pritzker said. “I think the way National Geographic is positioning it and putting an ad on the Super Bowl -- the ad was brilliant and funny and lowbrow and highbrow and for me [they have] absolutely the right sense of how to have fun with this and not get bogged down.”
“National Geographic has been very ebullient about busting open their brand,” Rush declared. “They are very keen that they are now exploring not just the chronicles of the natural world, but the story that goes around it.”
The executive producers made it quite clear this is not a documentary, but a fact-based series in which they use cinematic magic to illustrate how one of the greatest physicists changed the way people think.
“We were fortunate to pilot that in A Beautiful Mind and we found a way to do that, which was quite accessible in movies or television,” Grazer explained. “You have to create the cinematic experience.”