In Light of Strike, ABC Launching ‘War’ Early

In order to fill the void of new fall programming expected if the 18-week-old Writers Guild of America strike continues much longer, ABC announced plans Wednesday to air the first 18 hours of its 30-hour miniseries “War and Remembrance” in November, rather than next February as originally intended.

The remaining 12 hours of the World War II drama, a sequel to the 1983 miniseries “The Winds of War,” will air sometime in 1989.

ABC Entertainment President Brandon Stoddard said in a prepared statement, “We never imagined that the film’s premiere would be affected by a labor dispute, but in our determination to provide the best possible entertainment this fall, we now will be leading with our most exciting television event.”

Ted Harbert, vice president of programming at ABC, said the decision to rush the miniseries onto the schedule was made Monday--”and believe me, it wasn’t easy,” he said.

Even if the writers’ strike ends within the next few days, “we face a programming problem in late October and early November,” he said in an interview Wednesday. “The ability to get ‘War and Remembrance’ takes care of a major problem for us in terms of filling time.”

Production is virtually completed on the first 18 hours, Harbert said, with only scenes involving miniatures still being shot in London.

“It was a big question whether or not we could get this thing done physically in time; it will be a big achievement,” he said. “Even though the rough cut (is in good shape), there’s still a lot of work to be done.”

ABC’s decision to air the miniseries in two blocks was not precipitated by the writers’ strike, Harbert said.

“We never intended to air it in one 30-hour part,” he said.

Moving the first 18-hour segment into the November ratings “sweeps” period will leave a hole in the February sweeps, but the network still has plenty of competitive programming for that period, he said.

“Nothing we do will be as monumental (as ‘War and Remembrance’), but I think we’re going to be OK,” Harbert said.

“War and Remembrance,” based on the Herman Wouk novel, is the sequel to the 18-hour “The Winds of War,” which ABC said attracted an audience of 140 million viewers when it aired in February, 1983.

“The Winds of War” traced the events leading up to World War II through the story of the family of Victor (Pug) Henry, a fictional career Navy officer who became an unofficial envoy for President Franklin D. Roosevelt during the late 1930s. That series concluded on the day of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor.

“War and Remembrance” begins one week later, as Pug Henry is taking command of a cruiser at Pearl Harbor, and chronicles the travels of the Henry family to locations of the major events and battles of the war: Midway, Guadalcanal, Stalingrad, Yalta, El Alamein, the Battle of the Bulge, Leyte Gulf, Iwo Jima and Hiroshima. The series was filmed in 10 countries.

Both miniseries were produced and directed by Dan Curtis; the screenplay for the new miniseries was written by Wouk, Curtis and Earl Wallace. Most of the cast is the same, with Robert Mitchum as Henry, Polly Bergen as his wife, Victoria Tennant as Pamela Tudsbury, David Dukes as Leslie Slote, Peter Graves as Palmer Kirby and Ralph Bellamy as Roosevelt.

New to the sequel are Hart Bochner, replacing Jan-Michael Vincent as Henry’s son Byron; Jane Seymour, replacing Ali MacGraw as Byron’s wife, Natalie, and Sir John Gielgud, replacing John Houseman as Natalie’s uncle, Aaron Jastrow.

Telecast dates for the first 18 hours of “War and Remembrance” are Nov. 13, 8-11 p.m.; Nov. 15, 8-11 p.m.; Nov. 16, 8:30-11 p.m.; Nov. 17, 9-11 p.m.; Nov. 20, 9-11:30 p.m.; Nov. 22, 8:30-11 p.m.; Nov. 23, 8:30-11 p.m.