OLLIE NORTH SCRIPT ONLY ‘IN DEVELOPMENT’

If CBS decides to go ahead with a projected movie about Lt. Col. Oliver North, it won’t air until after his potential legal problems with the government’s special prosecutor are over, network officials said Thursday.

CBS Entertainment President B. Donald Grant confirmed that the network has commissioned a script for a TV movie about the Marine officer at the center of the Iran- contra affair but stressed that it is merely a “development deal” rather than a commitment to air the story.

Grant, responding to a question at a meeting with television writers at the Redondo Beach Sheraton, said CBS had struck a deal with Boston Globe journalist Ben Bradlee Jr. to adapt his upcoming book on North, “Guts and Glory.” He said he had not planned to make an official announcement of the deal at the session, part of CBS’ annual summer press tour.

“We don’t announce development deals,” Grant said. “It’s a script development deal. If we announced every development deal we had, we’d be here (for a long time). What we have is a development deal . . . and there is nothing more or nothing less than that at the moment.”

Asked whether North would receive any money from the CBS deal, Grant said the network’s arrangement was with Bradlee, not North.

Grant said that, as in all development deals, a script would be written and then evaluated before a decision is made to produce the film. “On its (the script’s) merits, we will either go forward or not as the case may be,” Grant said.

If the movie is made, it will not air until the 1988-89 season at the earliest, and possibly later, depending on whether North is brought to trial on criminal charges for his role in selling U.S. arms to Iran and diverting profits to the Nicaraguan rebels, then shredding government documents about the deal. He is currently under investigation by independent counsel Lawrence E. Walsh.

Due to possible influence on jurors, the network could not legally air the Oliver North story until a verdict was reached, said Kim LeMasters, CBS’ vice president of programs, who appeared with Grant.

LeMasters said he felt CBS was justified in acquiring the rights to headline cases such as North’s even when the outcome is still pending because of their information value.

“It’s just a development deal; we’re not rushing headlong to capture anything,” he said.

Grant said he believes audience interest in North will remain strong enough to warrant holding off the broadcast of the film. “When a headline from USA Today says something about ‘Olliemania,’ I happen to think the name of Lt. Col. Oliver North is going to be around for a while,” he said.

“I think people will still be interested in him. He’s a controversial figure, clearly, and some individuals view him as a hero--and others view him in quite a different light.”

Grant said there have been a number of Oliver North projects “floating around” the TV industry recently, including one that would be the Oliver North story as told by North to a third party. CBS opted for acquiring rights to Bradlee’s book instead of this project, he said, because “we felt that the appropriate thing to do in order to maintain objectivity was not to do the Oliver North story as told by Oliver North.”