Academy Award-winning screenwriter William Monahan – who famously adapted Hong Kong classic Infernal Affairs into Martin Scorsese‘s The Departed starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, and Jack Nicholson – is taking on a new limited series about Hollywood fixer, Sidney Korshak.
Deadline reports the upcoming drama has secured Jonah Hill to portray Sidney Korshak, set to explore the “complicated” relationship between the real-life grey figure with strong ties to the mob and MCA chairman Lew Wasserman – “the most powerful man in Hollywood”, at one stage. Here’s what we’re in for, according to the publication:
Wasserman was the visionary who in the 1940s liberated actors from film studio control by creating the modern talent agency – and then straddled both lines until the government made him choose… later shedding talent representation for producing. Wasserman’s empire-building was abetted by Korshak, an attorney now famous for providing a bridge between organized crime and Hollywood.
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William Monahan’s Sidney Korshak drama series will reportedly aim to have the same “epic sweep” of Martin Scorsese films, such as his own work in The Departed as well as the auteur’s latest release, The Irishman.
The upcoming collaboration is one that is positively bursting with potential. Here, you have an intriguing footnote of entertainment history being handled by a battle-tested scribe, proven in the art of adaptation; having produced blockbuster epics such as Body of Lies and Kingdom of Heaven in addition to Scorsese.
Then there’s the matter of Jonah Hill, who is fast proving himself to be a thespian with considerable dramatic versatility, leaping from the likes of Superbad and 21 Jump Street, to Moneyball and Wolf of Wall Street, stopping by to offer such underrated home runs as Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far On Foot opposite Joaquin Phoenix and Cary Joji Fukunaga’s twisty-turny psychological black comedy Maniac.
Further casting, network/platform, and a premiere date have yet to be confirmed.
