Having successfully got past the pilot stage, HBO have now picked up the New York porn industry drama The Deuce as a full series. James Franco and Maggie Gyllenhaal star in the show, with Gyllenhaal also a producer and Franco an exec-producer. Writer and showrunner David Simon (The Wire) is the driving force.
The Deuce concerns itself with the porn industry in the 1970s and 1980s, centred on New York and, in particular, Times Square in its former more scuzzy incarnation (if you want that in movie terms, it's the Times Square of The Exterminator rather than of The Amazing Spider-Man 2). Franco will play twin mobsters Vincent and Frankie Martino, while Gyllenhaal is a hooker called Candy, seduced from the streets into the newly legalised and rapidly expanding porn business. It's Boogie Nights with the Krays. Or something.
George Pelecanos (also The Wire) will be pitching in with Simon as a writer and producer, with their usual suspects Nina Noble and Richard Price contributing scripts too. The cast beyond Franco and Gyllenhaal includes Gary Carr, Margarita Levieva, Lawrence Gilliard Jr., Emily Meade and Dominique Fishback.
The Deuce's pilot episode is currently listed as being in post-production, with the full series presumably coming together over the course of this year.