The film shows RKO production chief George Schaefer announcing to Orson Welles and Herman J. Mankiewicz that he has lost his job on the very day of the opening of Citizen Kane (1941) in May 1941. In fact, Schaefer did not get fired until late in the following year, and this was less because he had promoted the film career of Orson Welles than because almost all the films RKO had made during his tenure had been flops.
The film depicts Orson Welles meeting William Randolph Hearst whilst a guest at the latter's home, San Simeon. In reality, Welles never visited San Simeon, and he never met Hearst until after Citizen Kane (1941) had opened. Their one alleged meeting was in a San Francisco elevator.
This was originally planned as a theatrical film. The original cast consisted of Edward Norton as Orson Welles, Marlon Brando as William Randolph Hearst, Madonna as Marion Davies, Dustin Hoffman as Herman J. Mankiewicz, Meryl Streep as Louella Parsons. Ridley Scott was slated to direct. But studios passed on the film because of the projected $40 million budget. Scott dropped out as director. Brando and Hoffman also dropped out. Gene Hackman was considered to replace Brando, and Al Pacino was considered to replace Hoffman. Eventually, the project was scaled down to a television movie, and the entire cast was replaced.
This film takes a great deal of fictional license with the historical record. According to The Battle Over Citizen Kane (1996), it was Herman J. Mankiewicz who persuaded Orson Welles to do the William Randolph Hearst story, not vice versa. Welles had no personal grudge against Hearst as Welles and Hearst never met, and Welles never visited Hearst's residence at San Simeon. RKO president George Schaefer wasn't fired when Citizen Kane (1941) opened in May 1941. Instead, he lost his job a year later due to RKO's lackluster box office receipts during his tenure. Marion Davies was neither the primary basis for the character Susan Alexander in Citizen Kane nor a mediocre actress who owed her career to Hearst. She was a successful comedienne in motion pictures before she met Hearst. Lastly, the mass hysteria created by Welles' War of the Worlds broadcast was reexamined by various scholars in the mid-2000s and determined to be a gross exaggeration by a hostile press.
This film perpetuates the myth that Marion Davies was the primary basis for the character Susan Alexander in Citizen Kane (1941). Orson Welles told filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich that this wasn't the case. Business tycoon Harold McCormick's lavish promotion of the opera career of his second wife was the direct influence for the character. "As for Marion [Davies]," Welles said, "she was an extraordinary woman-nothing like the character Dorothy Comingore played in the movie."