Having dabbled in TV with Trust, Danny Boyle is back on the miniseries kick with a new show that will dive headlong into the story of punk icons the Sex Pistols. He's tuning up an adaptation of Steve Jones' memoir Lonely Boy: Tales From A Sex Pistol, which will simply be called Pistol.
Toby Wallace will be Jones, while Maisie Williams is on to play Pamela Rooke, AKA Jordan. Anson Boon is playing Pistols lead singer John Lydon, Louis Partridge has scored the role of Sid Vicious, Jacob Slater will be Paul Cook, Fabien Frankel's playing Glen Matlock, Dylan Llewellyn is Wally Nightingale, Sydney Chandler will bring Chrissie Hynde to life, and Emma Appleton is set to appear as Nancy Spungen.
While Boyle will be the director for the six-episode run on US network FX (which means it'll likely crop up on Disney+ Star service here), Craig Pearce and Frank Cottrell Boyce are on script duty. "Imagine breaking into the world of The Crown and Downton Abbey with your mates and screaming your songs and your fury at all they represent," explains Boyle of the show. "This is the moment that British society and culture changed forever. It is the detonation point for British street culture... where ordinary young people had the stage and vented their fury and their fashion... and everyone had to watch and listen... and everyone feared them or followed them. The Sex Pistols. At its centre was a young charming illiterate kleptomaniac – a hero for the times – Steve Jones, who became in his own words, the 94th greatest guitarist of all time. This is how he got there."