David Simon pilots set for HBO

HBO’s long-standing partnership with The Wire creator David Simon continues with the greenlight of two pilots.

The US premium cable channel has given the greenlight to The Deuce, a pilot starring James Franco about the legalisation of the porn industry set around 1970s and 1980s New York; and a Capital Hill-themed drama with Watergate journalist Carl Bernstein.

Both projects will come through Simon’s Blown Deadline Productions imprint, and come after previous HBO-Simon efforts such as ground-breaking Baltimore underworld drama The Wire, New Orleans-set Treme and miniseries Generation Kill.

Simon has written The Deuce with collaborator George Pelecanos, and is in part inspired by career criminal twin brothers, who became fronts for the Mob around Times Square. France will play both characters.

Simon, Pelecanos, Richard Price (The Color of Money), Michelle MacLaren (Breaking Bad), Nina K. Noble and France are executive producers. Marc Henry Johnson is producer.

The project with Bernstein is set in the modern-day, and is set on Capitol Hill, which is a key part of American political mechanisms. Described as an examination of partisanship and the influence of money on the government.

The Wire co-writer Ed Burns, Simon, Bernstein, Noble and William F. Zorzi, who worked with Simon on upcoming HBO series Show Me a Hero, are attached to the project.