In welcome if expected news, HBO has picked up Boardwalk Empire for series, with eleven episodes to be produced on top of the completed pilot. Boardwalk Empire is a creation of Terence Winter based on the non-fiction book Boardwalk Empire: The Birth, High Times, and Corruption of Atlantic City by Nelson Johnson. The pilot was directed by Martin Scorsese, his first non-documentary television work since an episode of Amazing Stories back in 1986. Terence Winter was the second most prolific writer on The Sopranos after its creator David Chase. Boardwalk Empire will track the rise of Atlantic City as a corrupt embodiment of the Prohibition period (read: 1920s) through the eyes of Nucky Johnson, a real life bootlegger. While based on real events, the show will obviously be heavily dramatized.
The seriously amazing cast includes:
- Steve Buscemi plays Nucky Johnson, who runs a liquor distribution ring in Atlantic City.
- Michael Pitt plays Jimmy Darmody, a ruthless flunky of Nucky’s and a World War I veteran.
- Kelly Macdonald plays Margaret, an enterprising Irish immigrant who married into the wrong family to escape her own. I haven’t seen any specification for which, if any, character her husband might be.
- Michael Shannon plays Van Alden, a senior Treasury Department agent assigned to controlling bootlegging during the Prohibition era.
- Michael Kenneth Williams (Omar from The Wire!) plays Chalky White, the de facto ‘mayor’ of Chickenbone Beach, a black section of Atlantic City, which he rules with an iron fist. He’s an ex-boxer and confidant of Nucky’s.
- Stephen Graham plays Al Capone.
- Aleksa Palladino plays Darmody’s wife.
- Paul Sparks plays a funeral director who real business is bootlegging.
- Paz de la Huerta plays Nucky’s girlfriend, a hot party girl.
- Dabney Coleman plays Commodore Kaestner, Nucky’s predecessor and mentor.
- Vincent Piazza plays a young Lucky Luciano.
- Anthony Laciura plays Louis Kessel, Nucky Johnson’s loyal assistant.
- Shea Whigham plays Eli Johnson, Nucky’s corrupt sheriff brother.
Boardwalk Empire will resume production this fall and is expected to premiere fall 2010. Along with The Pacific and Treme, 2010 should be a great year for HBO dramas.
