Show to document doctors at Shaare Zedek hospital, set to be directed by Everybody Loves Raymond creator.
World-renowned American director Steven Spielberg plans to produce a reality television series set at Jerusalem's Shaare Zedek Medical Center, the Israeli financial newspaper Globes reported this week.
Dreamworks Studios, in which Spielberg is a partner, will produce the show, and according to the report, it will be directed by the Emmy Award winning producer Phil Rosenthal, who created and produced the popular television sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond.
"Spielberg asked me to consider doing television in Israel. I proposed making a docudrama about Shaare Zedek hospital, to which my family and I have made donations for decades," Rosenthal told Globes. "He loved the idea of a crowded hospital whose patients are secular Jews, haredim, Arabs, and some of whose doctors are Americans. We'll get the show on the road very soon."
The Jerusalem Post reported that Rosenthal was in Israel this week to check out Shaare Zedek and hold discussions with the Israeli producers of the show, which is scheduled to air on the Sundance Channel in 2011.
Spielberg has collaborated with Israelis several times in the past, particularly in his films Schindler's List in 1993, about German businessman Oskar Schindler who saved Jewish families during the Holocaust, and Munich in 2005, about the PLO massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympic Games, and the subsequent killing of the terrorists by the Mossad. Many Israeli actors participated in both films.
Spielberg is also a sponsor of the Holocaust Survivor Project, which documents survivors' testimonies.
http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/news/spielberg-s-new-project-a-reality-tv-show-set-in-jerusalem-1.2747
