After exactly two decades of exclusively airing (so-so blockbuster) movies, Encore is getting into the original-series game, and some big names are already attached.
Next big thing Tom Hardy, next Jeff Bridges William Hurt, and, well, Ethan Hawke are among the actors who are set to help the pay network branch out into non-movieland.
Hardy (Inception, the upcoming Dark Knight Rises) will headline The Take, a miniseries based on the bestselling crime novel of the same name. The project is anything but new, however: It aired in Hardy’s native England two years ago. But still!
A little more exciting and a little less recycled (sorta) is Hurt’s TV vehicle, a retelling of Moby Dick with the aforementioned Oscar winner in the big Captain Ahab role; Hawke playing his first mate Starbuck; and onetime X-Files star Gillian Anderson as Ahab’s wife.
Both series are penciled in for the second half of 2012, along with the original, very self-explanatorily titled documentary Method to the Madness of Jerry Lewis.
Source: THR
