Leslie Oren, a spokesman for FTVS, as the studio is known, confirmed that NBC is in “the early stages” of discussions to bring the Fox unit in as the production company on the as yet unnamed mini-series, which will star Diane Lane as Mrs. Clinton. “There is no deal yet,” Ms. Oren said. But should a deal be completed, FTVS would become the distributor of the film internationally. There’s just one teensy, tiny, little problem: 
 
 Fox Television Studios may be producing NBC’s Hillary miniseries. It would also become something of an odd partner in what has become a contentious project, especially after Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, threatened to keep presidential debates involving Republican candidates off both NBC and its news channel MSNBC, if it went ahead with what he called a “promotional movie about the life of Hillary Clinton.” 
 
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 But criticism of NBC’s decision to buy the film has also come from inside its news division, as two correspondents, Chuck Todd and Andrea Mitchell, have spoken out publicly suggesting the film would damage the reputation of NBC News. It was initially brought to to the company Endgame, before being pitched all around Hollywood, and eventually getting picked up by NBC. NBC then got in touch with Fox Television Studios to produce the project, having more experience than NBC’s own Universal Television Studios in creating “long-form” projects.
– Might Republicans have to blackball Fox from the GOP presidential debates, too? The New York Times adds an interesting twist to the controversy over a Hillary Clinton miniseries in the works—while the production is planned to air on NBC, it might be produced by Fox Television Studios. As reported earlier, the Republican National Committee is livid over the proposed miniseries, which it thinks will amount to free advertising for Clinton. If NBC airs it, the RNC has threatened to keep the debates off the network. (Ditto for CNN, which is working on a Clinton documentary.) NBC News has argued that it is a separate entity from the entertainment division of the network and thus shouldn't be penalized. (In fact, Andrea Mitchell and Chuck Todd have spoken out against the miniseries.) Now Fox News might have to make the same argument about Fox Television Studios, notes Mediaite.