ONCE UPON A CRIME

Think making The Godfather was easy? Fuhgeddaboudit! The Offer spins the crazy, chaotic tale behind the beloved American classic

- JIM HALTERMAN

The Offer SERIES PREMIERE Thursday, April 28, Paramount+

HOLLYWOOD IS A business, but, to quote a line from 1972's The Godfather, some people take it very personal. Like the time Robert Evans, head of the studio that, in 1970, wanted to turn Mario Puzo's gangland bestseller into a film, found a dead rat in his bed. Whoever put it there clearly didn't want to see The Godfather onscreen.

"I don't know what the f--- you've gotten me into, but I'm not getting killed for some gangster movie!" a spooked Evans (played with grand flair by Matthew Goode) shouts in The Offer, the 10-episode Paramount+ limited series that dramatizes the crazy real-life antics that nearly put the kibosh on one of the greatest films of all time.

Fifty years after it first hit theaters, it now seems inconceivable that The Godfather almost didn't make the journey from the page to the projector. Also hard to imagine: the idea that its off-set story might be about as dramatic as the film itself. But as The Offer makes clear in juicy detail, filming the Oscar-winning epic required beating back “a constant escalation of risk and stakes," says Miles Teller, who plays the remarkably even-tempered Albert S. Ruddy, the producer. His most prominent prior credit: cocreating the zany 1960s WWII sitcom Hogan's Heroes. "This was a moment for Al to truly define himself as a bona fide film producer," Teller adds, "and he wasn't going to let anything stop him—including the heavy hand of the Mafia."