Miramax has announced that it’s teaming up with legendary filmmaker Martin Scorsese for a television series based upon Scorsese’s acclaimed 2002 historical drama Gangs of New York.
The film explored the confrontations between rival gangs in New York City during the 1980s, with a cast that included likes of Leonardo DiCaprio, Daniel Day-Lewis, Cameron Diaz and Liam Neeson. It was nominated for ten Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor (Day-Lewis, for his turn as gang leader Bill ‘the Butcher’ Cutting).
According to the press release from Miramax, “the series will draw from the multitude of events surrounding organized gangs at the turn of the century and shortly thereafter in America, not only in New York, but in other cities such as Chicago and New Orleans and the birth of organized crime in America.”
“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,” states Scorsese, who won an Emmy for directing the pilot episode of another period crime epic, HBO’s Boardwalk Empire. “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.”
