Aaron Sorkin to film presidential scandal

The film will be Mr Sorkin’s directorial debut, but it is by no means the first time he has turned his attention to Washington politics.

In 2007 he wrote the film version of Charlie Wilson's War, the story of a controversial Texan congressman who funnelled money in the 1980s to the Afghanistan Taliban so they could fight Soviet troops.

The West Wing, which ran for seven seasons, followed the lives of senior White House staff, with one storyline featuring a politician whose ambitions were thwarted by a sex scandal.

Mr Sorkin’s next film, The Social Network, is released in October. It tells the story of Mark Zuckerberg, the teenage Jewish computing genius who created Facebook.