CNN Films acquires SXSW doc ‘Our Nixon’ to air on the network in August

Richard Nixon is hot again.

Fresh on the heels of Discovery Channel’s critically acclaimed documentary “All the Presidents Men Revisited,” about the scandal that brought down President Nixon and the movie it inspired, CNN Films and Cinedigm have acquired distribution rights to “Our Nixon” for television and theatrical release respectively.

Directed by Penny Lane and co-produced by Lane and Brian Frye, “Our Nixon” culls together long-neglected Super 8 home movie footage shot by Nixon chief of staff H.R. Haldeman, domestic affairs adviser John Ehrlichman and special assistant Dwight Chapin between 1969 and 1973.

The film made its North American debut at this year’s South by Southwest festival.

PHOTOS: The scene at SXSW 2013

“Lane and Frye have meticulously created a film that may impact the way future historians recount and interpret the Nixon White House,” Vinnie Malhotra, CNN’s senior vice president of development and acquisitions, said. “It also portrays the intensively insular nature of governing at the highest levels, and how those inside that world can be changed by it.”

Since launching a film unit last October, CNN has obtained the broadcast rights to Richard E. Robbins’ “Girl Rising” and a Martin Scorsese-produced documentary about the life of recently deceased film critic Roger Ebert. The cable network has also signed development deals with directors Alex Gibney (“Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room,” “Client 9”) and Andrew Rossi (“Page One”).

“Our Nixon” is set to make its U.S. television premiere on CNN in August and will be released theatrically by Cinedigm the same month.

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