At long last, it’s officially official; the Deadwood movie is happening. HBO has been playing with the idea of wrapping up the beloved western drama for years now and the project, at a snail’s unsatisfyingly, miserably slow pace, has been coming together bit by bit and piece by piece. Now, all of those pieces have finally been locked in place and the movie has been given the green light by HBO.
The announcement was made during the TCA summer press tour by HBO president Casey Bloys, who has made promising statements about the movie in the past but this time he made it clear this is really happening. Bloys actually used the term greenlit and offered a timetable for production. Here’s what Bloys had to say about it.
“All of these people worked hard to get this together. It’s been a logistics nightmare getting all the cast members’ schedules together but we are there. It is greenlit.”
While not “set in stone,” Casey Bloys added that the Deadwood movie is set to begin filming this October and could be looking at a fall 2019 release. The show originally went off the air in 2006, meaning that it will likely debut a full 13 years after the final episode made it to air. The old “better late than never” line of thinking probably applies to this exact situation.
As was pointed out in Bloys’ statement, getting the cast together has been a tricky element when it comes to putting this together. Ian McShane and Timothy Olyphant, in particular, have been very busy and it’s a large ensemble that is needed in order for this movie to actually happen. Creator David Milch has been busy as well, but he’s been making time for this off and on and delivered a script to HBO last year, which the network wanted to stand on its own for those who hadn’t watched the tragically short-lived series. According to Bloys’ “David totally delivered on that. It’s a terrific script.”
Deadwood was set in the 1870s, when the richest gold strike in U.S. history drew a throng of restless misfits to an outlaw settlement in the Black Hills of South Dakota. The show features a cast of surly inhabitants and we see the community grow from a small camp to an actual town as people flock there to find their fortune. The series originally aired from 2004 to 2006 for a total of 36 episodes and was canceled over a dispute between Paramount Television and HBO.
Star Robin Weigert revealed last week in an interview that “There’s a 90% chance it’ll finally happen.” Turns out, she was right. The plan originally was to wrap things up in two two-hour movies, but that never came to pass. David Milch previously hinted that a fourth season would have focused on actual disasters that occurred in the town such as a huge fire and a plague outbreak. While official plot details for the Deadwood movie have not yet been revealed, that may give us some clue as to what he has planned. This news comes to us courtesy of Variety.