• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, November 13, 2015

If Bernie Madoff has television privileges in prison, then he’s going to get an eyeful next year.

That’s when he’ll get to see two Oscar-winning actors playing him in separate made-for-TV productions about his life -- if his TV privileges at the Butner Federal Correctional Complex in North Carolina include HBO. Butner is where Madoff, 77, is serving a 150-year sentence for engineering the largest financial fraud in U.S. history.

He entered prison in 2009, which means it has taken six years for TV to get around to dramatizing his story. In September, HBO released a photo of Robert De Niro and Michelle Pfeiffer posing in costume as Bernie and Ruth Madoff in the upcoming TV movie called “The Wizard of Lies.” De Niro has won two Oscars (for “The Godfather, Part 2” and “Raging Bull”).

Filming took place in and around New York this fall. HBO says no air date has been set yet, but it’s reasonable to assume the movie will air next year.

Air dates for TV’s other Madoff project -- ABC’s two-part, four-hour miniseries titled simply “Madoff” -- were announced Thursday. It will air Wednesday, Feb. 3, and Thursday, Feb. 4, from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. Eastern on both nights.

HBO’s air date decision might now hinge on whether the pay-cable channel wants to beat ABC to the punch by scheduling its movie before the ABC miniseries, or distance itself from the ABC mini by scheduling its version farther into next year.

ABC’s “Madoff” features Richard Dreyfuss – one-time Oscar winner for “The Goodbye Girl” -- in the title role and Blythe Danner as Ruth (both shown in character in the photo accompanying this blog).

The scheduling represents a significant vote of confidence in this miniseries, since it will air on two nights during the February sweeps -- including one night, Thursday, on which it will pre-empt two-thirds of ABC’s lineup of three hit shows produced by Shonda Rhimes. With this schedule, “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Scandal” will be pre-empted, but “How To Get Away with Murder” will not.

“Madoff’ will follow the prodigious rise and abrupt demise of the former investment advisor and the subsequent fallout with his family, associates and investors,” said ABC’s press release in which the use of the word “demise” would seem to imply that Bernie suddenly died, which he did not.

Also in the cast of “Madoff”: Tom Lipinski and Danny Defarrari as sons Mark and Andrew Madoff, respectively; Peter Scolari as Bernie’s brother, Peter Madoff; Erin Cummings as Bernie Madoff’s secretary, Eleanor Squillari; Michael Rispoli as Frank DiPascali, a long-time Madoff colleague who turned government witness (he died this past May); and Frank Whaley as Harry Markopolos, the financial investigator who is credited with discovering Madoff’s scheme. ABC’s release said Charles Grodin and Lewis Black are also in the miniseries but didn’t specify their roles. ABC’s “Madoff” is based on “The Madoff Chronicles,” a book written by ABC News investigative reporter Brian Ross.

HBO’s “Wizard of Lies” is directed by Barry Levinson. The supporting cast includes Hank Azaria as DiPascali and Kathrine Narducci (best known for her role as Charmaine Bucco on “The Sopranos”) as Squillari.

Two books reportedly serve as sources for “The Wizard of Lies” – one by Diane Henriques (also titled “The Wizard of Lies”) and the other by Laurie Sandell, “Truth and Consequences.”

While these two projects represent the first scripted dramas made for TV about the Madoff mess, the story has been gone over repeatedly in a host of made-for-TV documentaries and scandal specials that have aired for years. Most of these are distinguishable by the repeated use of a piece of now-famous videotape of Bernie in a confrontation with news photographers as they jockey for position and, at one point, even jab Bernie sharply in the chest.

This confrontation outside Madoff’s apartment house at the corner of 64^th Street and Lexington Avenue in Manhattan is so renowned that locals joke that the corner should be renamed Bernie Madoff Place.

Will this famous scene be re-created in HBO’s movie or ABC’s miniseries? We’ll have to wait until next year to find out.