While everyone is thinking about television and their favorite shows (and stars) in anticipation of tonight's Emmys, deals are still happening - including one that is sure to keep HBO at the top of the heap. According to Deadline, Martin Scorsese is teaming with HBO and Paramount Television to turn his smash 2010 thriller "Shutter Island" into a television series for the premium cable network. The show is "tentatively" called Ashecliffe, and current plans have Dennis Lehane, who wrote the novel that the film was based on, penning the pilot, with Scorsese directing. This could be good.The original film starred Leonard DiCaprio as a federal agent in the fifties who is tasked with uncovering the truth behind a missing person reported at Ashecliffe, an island home for the psychologically disturbed. (DiCaprio will be an executive producer on the new series.) There are twists and turns galore, with Scorsese tipping his hat more than once to classic B-movies and horror films that he loved as a child. The final result was an endlessly stylish thriller that was heavier on mood than it was on narrative specifics, but that you really didn't mind because you were having so much fun.
Scorsese, of course, has a longstanding relationship with HBO. He's directed several documentaries that have premiered on the channel (the latest of which, about the New York Times Review of Books, is on this fall) and directed the pilot and executive produces their period crime series "Boardwalk Empire." He also directed the pilot for a seventies rock'n'roll show that he's doing with Mick Jagger and "Boardwalk Empire" creator Terence Winter. (Winter also wrote Scorsese's "Wolf of Wall Street.")
When this actually happens is determined by Scorsese and his schedule; he begins shooting "Silence" in Taiwan early next year for a possible Oscar run in late 2015 (if he can get it done on time). Hopefully this will be a priority, though, since it sounds so darn cool.
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