Martin Scorsese (Shutter Island, The Wolf of Wall Street) sure is one busy man. On top of his work on Killers of the Flower Moon, Devil in the White City, and a documentary about David Johansen of the New York Dolls, he now has another project on hand.
Deadline reports that the well-known director will helm the first two episodes of a Gangs of New York television series, which sees Brett Leonard (Lawnmower Man) serving as scriptwriter. The stint marks the Scorsese’s second attempt at adapting Herbert Asbury’s 1927 historical novel, with the first being a 2002 film that starred Leonardo DiCaprio, Cameron Diaz, and Daniel Day-Lewis.
While details remain sketchy, it seems the project will be a fresh take on the story with new characters that weren’t featured in the movie. The original book details various confrontations between the rival New York gangs during the mid-to-late 1800s before the rise of the Italian-American Mafia in the 1920s.
Scorsese was previously attached to another adaptation of Gangs of New York in 2013, but that was planned to follow organised gangs not only in New York, but in other cities as well. “This time and era of America’s history and heritage is rich with characters and stories that we could not fully explore in a two-hour film,” he said at the time. “A television series allows us the time and creative freedom to bring this colorful world, and all the implications it had and still does on our society, to life.”
The show is being developed internally at Miramax TV, with no release date, casting details, or streaming platform announced just yet. Scorsese will also join Rick Yorn (Max Payne, The Wolf of Wall Street) and Chris Donnelly (Ill Manors) as executive producer. “Amsterdam sets out to avenge the death of his father who was killed in a gang fight at the hands of a crime lord, Bill ‘The Butcher’,” reads the synopsis for the original movie. “Whilst doing so, he gets caught up in the Civil War.”
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