Julianne Moore's 'Game Change' as Sarah Palin

LOS ANGELES: Americans may be gearing up for the 2012 presidential elections, but HBO is revisiting the drama of the 2008 race to the White House in a TV film about Sarah Palin and John McCain.

"Game Change," starring Julianne Moore as Palin and Ed Harris as McCain, is based on the 2010 book by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin that documented the behind-the-scenes action of the presidential campaign four years ago.

But the new film, which will premier on March 10, focuses on the rise of Palin as McCain's 2008 Republican Party running mate.

"We felt that story of Sarah Palin is truly one of the great American political stories of our time," writer Danny Strong told television reporters on Friday.

Moore said that she spent hours working with a vocal coach to master Palin's "idiosyncratic way of speaking" as well as reading Palin's book and watching her TV reality show, "Sarah Palin's Alaska."