Last month it was reported that Ben Affleck and George Clooney were pairing their handsomeness behind the camera for a film about CIA agents who posed as film scouts to infiltrate Iran during the infamous 70’s hostage crisis. Now, according to Deadline, HBO is planning to turn the tables on us.
HBO is developing a new series with Martyn Burke (Pirates of Silicon Valley) focusing on Russians living seemingly normal lives in the United States, while secretly sending dispatches to Moscow. Set during the Reagan administration, the series is tentatively titled Reds (Warren Beatty will have your ass if you call it that) and is based on some real experiences that occurred in Burke’s life back in the 80’s when he was traveling around the country with a documentary camera crew. Unbeknownst to him and the rest of the crew, the film’s sound man was in reality a colonel in the KGB. The Soviet spy had set up his base of operations outside New York City and was raising a family, attempting to appear like an ordinary American citizen. The man was eventually caught.
No word yet on the show’s tone, but presumably the series will either go the dramatic Sopranos route, with a hard-edged violent life being masked under the blah-veil of suburbia, or a more dramedic non-violent Big Love route.