Weiner, the acclaimed documentary chronicling Anthony Weiner’s disastrous 2013 mayoral campaign, is set to be remade into a feature film.
The former Democrat congressman agreed to have his former chief of staff Josh Kriegman and fellow filmmaker Elyse Steinberg film him on the campaign trail but the decision backfired when revelations that he had continued sending explicit pictures of himself online to women doomed his mayoral bid.
The film, released a month ago, features painfully awkward scenes between Weiner and his wife Huma Abedin, a longtime senior aide to Hillary Clinton. The couple is shown dealing with the fallout from the sexting revelations as well as embarrassing footage of Weiner’s sexting companion Sydney Leathers following the mayoral candidate around New York.
You must see hilarious Anthony Weiner documentary, now in theaters. https://t.co/uB4DxI3kTq via @nypost
— Kyle Smith (@rkylesmith) May 22, 2016
A source told Heat Street the filmmakers have received several bids to sell the rights for a narrative feature movie and are on the brink of completing a deal to sell their footage of Weiner’s mayoral campaign.
The source said: “Josh and Elyse have plenty of footage of Weiner that they didn’t use in their film and selling the rights to it will enable their company Edgeline Films to fund their next documentary.”
It is likely that the feature film will fictionalize Weiner’s political scandal, which followed his 2011 resignation from Congress for similar sexual transgressions on social media when it was revealed he used the name “Carlos Danger” as his sexual nom de plume.
Recent films that were adapted from documentaries include Our Brand is Crisis starring Sandra Bullock and The Program, a Lance Armstrong biopic featuring Ben Foster and Dustin Hoffman.
Even though Weiner features Abedin telling her husband, “You don’t know anything” and advising his communications director to look happy when she walks outside because “it’s an optics thing,” the film has not embarrassed Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid in the way that some had anticipated.
In spite of brilliant reviews, the film has not been a significant commercial hit; it has made less than a million dollars. Weiner has grossed significantly less than Michael Moore’s poorly reviewed Where To Invade Next? and earth movie A Beautiful Planet.
Weiner hopes to get a second wind when it is aired on Showtime shortly before the November election.
FYC 2016: Best Actress, Huma Abedin in WEINER.
— Jordan Hoffman (@jhoffman) January 25, 2016
Weiner himself told Heat Street, via email, that he has still yet to see the movie. It was rumored that Weiner had viewed early footage before completely severing ties with the film when he learned his wife took center stage.
But Weiner said: “I don’t know what early footage means. He [Josh Kriegman]was shooting for the campaign. So we used his footage. Also I was there.”
In January he told Alan Colmes on Fox News Radio: “We made a deal with him [Kriegman] that if he would shoot raw video for us, and allow us to use it in the ads and press releases and rebuttals if we ever needed them in the website, he would have access to what he had when he was done.
“He didn’t have any access to my wife, and to some elements, to the people in the campaign..it seems transparently dishonest to everyone to sell this about the Clinton campaign or it was about Huma, it really wasn’t. ”
Kriegman would not comment on the remake rights being sold. A spokesman for the film said an intensive promotional tour had taken a toll on the Weiner directors: “The filmmakers are beyond burned out and I’ve had to give them a rest period before scheduling any more press.”
