Companion to Six-Hour PBS Documentary, Cancer: The Emperor of All Maladies, Half-Hour Companion Special Explores How the Series Was Made from a Pulitzer Prize-Winning Book to a Film for National PBS Audiences, wih Panelists Ken Burns, Siddhartha Mukherjee, M.D. and Sharon Percy RockefellerOfficial Radio Partner, WNYC, Will Premiere National Radio Content Beginning on February 9
February 4, 2015—Washington, D.C. — WETA, the flagship public media station for Washington, D.C., announced today, World Cancer Day, that it has produced a 30-minute television special titled Cancer: The Emperor of All Maladies — A Conversation. The program is a companion piece to the national public media project Ken Burns Presents Cancer: The Emperor of All Maladies A Film by Barak Goodman, which includes a six-hour documentary series for PBS that presents a comprehensive report on the history of the disease, the state of cancer today, the treatments and the promise of ongoing research.The series is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer (Simon & Schuster 2010) by Siddhartha Mukherjee, M.D. At the urging of Stand Up To Cancer (SU2C) co-founder, the late Laura Ziskin, the Entertainment Industry Foundation obtained the television and film rights for its Stand Up To Cancer initiative shortly after the book was published.
The half-hour program features a roundtable conversation exploring the themes, issues and stories of the documentary, and the process of bringing the project from book to national television broadcast on PBS. The conversation is hosted by award winning Katie Couric, global news anchor for Yahoo! News and a co-founder of Stand Up To Cancer (SU2C). The panel includes filmmaker Ken Burns, series executive producer, who lost his mother to cancer when he was 11 years old; Siddhartha Mukherjee, M.D.; and Sharon Percy Rockefeller, president and CEO of WETA, and a cancer survivor, Through personal stories and insights, as well as excerpts from the documentary, Cancer: The Emperor of All Maladies — A Conversation highlights successes, continuing struggles, awareness and personal experiences of cancer.
The half-hour program was taped before a live audience on December 8, 2014 at The George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health in Washington, D.C. The show will air on PBS stations around the country prior to the national broadcast of the three-part, six-hour Cancer: The Emperor of All Maladies on March 30, March 31 and April 1, 2015. Cancer: The Emperor of All Maladies — A Conversation will be available to view online at http://www.CancerFilms.org beginning February 17, 2015.
A version of the program will also be available on Yahoo!.
An electronic press kit for Cancer: The Emperor of All Maladies is available at pbs.org/pressroom.
WNYC, the premiere public radio producer and broadcaster in NYC, is producing a national radio companion series for the project. The first series will air on NPR’s Morning Edition and All Things Considered during the week of February 9; the second will air the week of March 23. For more information on the radio series, visit http://www.wnyc.org/cancer
Ken Burns Presents Cancer: The Emperor of All Maladies A Film by Barak Goodman is a production of Florentine Films, Laura Ziskin Pictures and WETA Washington, D.C., in association with Ark Media. Executive Producer and senior creative consultant: Ken Burns. Written by Geoffrey Ward and Ken Burns, and Barak Goodman & David Blistein. Based on the book The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee. Produced and directed by Barak Goodman. Executive producers: Dalton Delan, David S. Thompson, Pamela Oas Williams and Laura Ziskin. The Cancer: The Emperor of All Maladies broadcast is made possible by project supporters Genentech, Cancer Treatment Centers of America, Siemens, David H. Koch, Bristol-Myers Squibb, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Kovler Fund, The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, the American Association for Cancer Research, the American Cancer Society, The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, the Entertainment Industry Foundation, Stand Up To Cancer (SU2C), the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and PBS.
Cancer: The Emperor of All Maladies — A Conversation is a production of WETA Washington, D.C. The executive producers are Dalton Delan and Chris Guarino. The senior supervising producer is Max Schindler, Jr. The producer is Susie Miles. Cancer: The Emperor of All Maladies — A Conversation is made possible by Alan and Marsha Paller.
# # #About WETA Washington, D.C.
WETA Washington, D.C., is one of the largest producing stations of new content for public television in the United States. WETA productions and co-productions include PBS NewsHour, Washington Week with Gwen Ifill, The Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize, In Performance at the White House and documentaries by filmmaker Ken Burns, including The Civil War, Jazz, Baseball, THE WAR, The National Parks: America’s Best Idea, The Dust Bowl and The Roosevelts: An Intimate History. More information on WETA and its programs and services is available at http://www.weta.org.
About Stand Up To Cancer
Stand Up To Cancer (SU2C) was established in 2008 by film and media leaders who utilize the industry’s resources to engage the public in supporting a new, collaborative model of cancer research, and to increase awareness about progress being made in the fight against the disease. SU2C raises funds to accelerate the pace of research that will get new therapies to patients quickly and save lives now.
Current members of the SU2C Council of Founders and Advisors (CFA) include talk show host, journalist and well-known cancer advocate Katie Couric; Sherry Lansing, chairperson of the Entertainment Industry Foundation’s Board of Directors and founder of the Sherry Lansing Foundation; EIF President and CEO Lisa Paulsen; EIF senior vice president Kathleen Lobb; Rusty Robertson and Sue Schwartz of the Robertson Schwartz Agency; Pamela Oas Williams, president of Laura Ziskin Productions and executive producer of Stand Up To Cancer’s in-house production team; and non-profit executive Ellen Ziffren. The late co-founder Laura Ziskin executive produced SU2C’s 2008 and 2010 “roadblock” televised fundraising specials, and all current members of the CFA were co-producers of the 2012 and 2014 shows. Sung Poblete, Ph.D., R.N., has served as SU2C’s president and CEO since 2011. More information is available at http://www.standup2cancer.org.
About New York Public Radio
New York Public Radio is home to three of the country’s leading public radio stations — WNYC FM, WNYC AM and WQXR FM — as well as New Jersey Public Radio and The Jerome L. Greene Performance Space. WNYC is a major producer of original content for public radio nationwide. WQXR is New York City’s only all-classical music station. New Jersey Public Radio covers the issues that matter in the Garden State and extends New York Public Radio’s news, talk and cultural programming deeper into New Jersey. The Greene Space is a street-front broadcast studio and live venue where audiences can experience our programming in person and online. New York Public Radio’s online platforms include wnyc.org, wqxr.org, njpublicradio.org and thegreenespace.org. To learn more about New York Public Radio, visit http://www.nypublicradio.org.
www.CancerFilms.org • @CancerFilm • #CancerFilm • www.facebook.com/CancerFilm.
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