For the second year in a row, HBO has set up a property as a potential producing and starring vehicle for James Gandolfini.
According to Deadline.com, “Breaking Bad” writer-producer Peter Gould is developing Nicholas Johnson’s darkly comedic memoir “Big Dead Place” for Gandolfini.
The book focuses on Johnson’s time working for the U.S. Antarctic Program at McMurdo Station. [We’d recommend Werner Herzog’s documentary “Encounters at the End of the World” for a sense of the world of McMurdo.]
It wasn’t so long ago — last May, in fact — that HBO recruited a writer to develop the French-Canadian comedy “Taxi-22” as a possible producing-starring vehicle for Gandolfini, who won three Emmys as star of “The Sopranos.” That project apparently didn’t move forward.
Gandolfini’s Attaboy Films production shingle has had a deal with HBO since 2006. The “In the Loop” and “Where The Wild Things Are” star is a producer on HBO’s upcoming “Hemingway & Gellhorn,” starring Clive Owen and Nicole Kidman.