EXCLUSIVE: Oscar-winning Brokeback Mountain writers Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana have teamed with Super Size Me documentary filmmaker Morgan Spurlock for a drama series project set up at HBO. The project, described as a big-canvas Texas political drama, is based on an idea by Spurlock, who, along with…

Sundance…

HBO has put in development Muscle, a single-camera comedy from Blue Valentine co-writer/director Derek Cianfrance about the subculture of contemporary professional bodybuilding. It is based on Sam Fussell’s memoir Muscle: Confessions of an Unlikely Bodybuilder, which chronicles his four-year stint as a full-time…

EXCLUSIVE: Oscar-nominated writer Kenneth Lonergan has come on board to pen Taxi-22, HBO’s adaptation of the hit French Canadian single-camera comedy executive produced by James Gandolfini and developed as a potential starring vehicle for the Sopranos star through his Attaboy Films production company. Lonergan…

EXCLUSIVE: It’s ladies’ season at HBO as the pay cable network is putting in development another high-profile project fronted by a top comedic actress. HBO just picked up a comedy from veteran Simpsons writer-producer Tim Long with Molly Shannon attached to star. The untitled comedy would star the Saturday Night Live…

EXCLUSIVE: Clyde Phillips has set up his first post-Dexter project. After a bidding war among several cable networks, HBO has landed a character-driven drama from Phillips and Lionsgate TV based on the Israeli series The Naked Truth. Phillips, who spent 4 years at Showtime running Dexter, will write the adaptation and…

After recreating Prohibition era Atlantic City in Boardwalk Empire, HBO is looking to resurrect Cold War era Berlin in a new spy drama project from Boardwalk executive producers Stephen Levinson and Mark Wahlberg, New Yorker writer/best-selling author Malcolm Gladwell and film/TV writer Charles Randolph (The Interprete…

EXCLUSIVE: HBO is looking to add more estrogen to its current slate of all-guy comedy series: Entourgage, Eastbound & Down, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Bored to Death, Hung, The Life and Times of Tim and How to Make it America. A new comedy project staring and produced by Tea Leoni is in serious consideration for a pilot…

EXCLUSIVE: HBO is developing a single-camera comedy series based on Clint McCown’s 1995 book The Member-Guest. Feature writer-producer Steve Pink (High Fidelity) is writing the script. Kevin Bacon is executive producing with an eye towards starring in the project, about a burned-out golf pro of a 9-hole course who…

Al Pacino & Joe Pesci Circling Scorsese/De Niro Mob Movie EXCLUSIVE: It’s turning out to be an interesting week for projects based on organized crime. Just as HBO’s Boardwalk Empire was renewed for a second season after one superb Martin Scorsese-directed pilot episode, I’m told that there’s a hot new TV project in…

EXCLUSIVE: Former Paramount Film Group president John Lesher has set up two series projects at HBO as a producer, both with feature writers: Keys to the City, which is being penned by Oscar winner William Monahan, and The Three Weissmanns of Westport, written by Rachel Getting Married scribe Jenny Lumet. Both…

EXCLUSIVE: HBO is teaming with Will Ferrell and Adam McKay's Gary Sanchez and actress Lizzy Caplan to develop a comedy series project based on actress/writer Julie Klausner's memoir I Don't Care About Your Band. The project is eyed as a potential starring vehicle for Caplan, who is coming off Starz's cult comedy…