If there’s one actor we want to see more of, all the time, it’s Casey Affleck. Last year we were lucky enough to get him in two major roles in “Ain’t Them Bodies Saints” and “Out Of Furnace,” while in 2014, we’ll have to wait until the end of the year to see what he gets up to in Christopher Nolan‘s “Interstellar.” However, we’re about get a whole lot more of Affleck in a big way, with the actor headed to the small screen.
Affleck has signed up to star in HBO‘s “Lewis And Clark.” As you might have surmised from the title, the six-hour miniseries will be about explorers Lewis and Clark, and their journey down the Missouri River. Some big talent is behind this one with powerhouses Tom Hanks and Brad Pitt putting the executive producer credit on this thing. And the show will be adapted from the book “Undaunted Courage” by Stephen E. Ambrose (the guy who penned “Band Of Brothers“). Here’s the Amazon synopsis:
From the bestselling author of Band of Brothers and D-Day, the definitive book on Lewis and Clark’s exploration of the Louisiana Purchase, the most momentous expedition in American history and one of the great adventure stories of all time.
In 1803 President Thomas Jefferson selected his personal secretary, Captain Meriwether Lewis, to lead a voyage up the Missouri River to the Rockies, over the mountains, down the Columbia River to the Pacific Ocean, and back. Lewis and his partner, Captain William Clark, made the first map of the trans-Mississippi West, provided invaluable scientific data on the flora and fauna of the Louisiana Purchase territory, and established the American claim to Oregon, Washington, and Idaho.
Ambrose has pieced together previously unknown information about weather, terrain, and medical knowledge at the time to provide a vivid backdrop for the expedition. Lewis is supported by a rich variety of colorful characters, first of all Jefferson himself, whose interest in exploring and acquiring the American West went back thirty years. Next comes Clark, a rugged frontiersman whose love for Lewis matched Jefferson’s. There are numerous Indian chiefs, and Sacagawea, the Indian girl who accompanied the expedition, along with the French-Indian hunter Drouillard, the great naturalists of Philadelphia, the French and Spanish fur traders of St. Louis, John Quincy Adams, and many more leading political, scientific, and military figures of the turn of the century.
High adventure, high politics, suspense, drama, and diplomacy combine with high romance and personal tragedy to make this outstanding work of scholarship as readable as a novel.
John Curran (“The Painted Veil,” “Tracks“) will direct and co-wrote the script with Edward Norton (also executive producing, damn) and Michelle Ashford. No word yet on when production will begin but hopefully soon. [Deadline]