Robert Redford will produce Watergate documentary with Discovery Channel

Robert Redford will produce a documentary about Watergate, more than 30 years after appearing in a film about the US political scandal.

Robert Redford, 75, played journalist Bob Woodward in the 1976 movie All the President’s Men, whose uncovering of the scandal lead to the resignation of President Richard Nixon.

The actor told the New York Times it was the “right time to take a look at this moment in history”.

The documentary will premiere in 2013.

As well as producing All The President’s Men Revisited, Robert Redford will also act as narrator.

The controversy that surrounded the break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington, prompted President Richard Nixon to resign in 1974.

Washington Post reporters Woodward and Carl Bernstein – portrayed by Dustin Hoffman in the film – played a key role in uncovering the scandal, which was traced back to members of a Nixon-support group.

The 1976 film was nominated for four Oscars, winning four including one for screenwriter William Goldman.

The new documentary has been commissioned by the Discovery Channel and will explore the effect the scandal has had on US politics and the media in the four decades since.

“To be able to pull the fabricated and the real together, for the first time, is kind of a juicy opportunity for us,” Eileen O’Neill, the president of Discovery, said.

Last week, Robert Redford said he believed documentaries have replaced newspapers as the media’s main source of investigative journalism.

Robert Redford also said he thought papers were in “steep decline” and documentaries have become “a better form of truth”.