Martin Scorsese is no stranger to the small screen, and particularly not to HBO where he was part of the team behind Boardwalk Empire and where he has set up a new, untitled music drama with Mick Jagger. He’ll be overseeing the transition of one of his films from the big screen to the small next, making a deal to turn 2010's Shutter Island into a potential series for the US cable channel.
Paramount TV boss Amy Powell hatched the idea for a show, and pitched it to Scorsese’s team. He liked it enough to recruit Dennis Lehane, who wrote the original novel and will script the pilot episode for Scorsese to direct.
Currently titled Ashecliffe, the story will be set at the psychiatric hospital in the years before the events of the movie. The focus will be on Ashecliffe’s dark, corrupt past and the misdeeds of the people who built it and developed the treatments seen in the movie. So while we can’t expect Leonardo DiCaprio or most of the film’s cast to pop up, it’s certainly fertile ground for drama and conflict. And having Scorsese to help launch it doesn’t hurt.
The director, who last brought us The Wolf Of Wall Street, is working on the pilot for the rock ‘n’ roll TV project and putting the pieces together for his next film, Silence, which will star Andrew Garfield, Liam Neeson, Adam Driver and Ken Watanabe.