Michael Mann is heading back to TV. Way back in his early days as a writer/producer, he worked on episodes of Starsky And Hutch and Miami Vice. Of course, he went on direct massive movies such as Heat, The Last Of The Mohicans, Ali and Collateral.
And now, with the golden age of ‘peak TV’ continuing, FX has snapped up Mann to helm a new war drama. The show will adapt Hue 1968, Mark Bowden’s bestseller, all about American involvement in the conflict. (You might recognise Bowden’s name – he also wrote the book that became Black Hawk Down.)
Mann will direct multiple episodes, including the first one. There are expected to be 8-10 episodes in total, making this very much a limited series. Filming is expected to start, in Asian locations, by the end of this year.
Deadline reports that the show will “humanize the conflict by telling the story through the eyes of different characters on both sides over a 26-day period.”
Deadline also offers this big paragraph of info…
The intertwined characters include a seemingly innocent schoolgirl on a bike, whose heart had hardened her into a revolutionary after her sister was executed, leading her to help smuggle weapons; a former NFL tackle who became a U.S. Marine colonel and tactician; a Buddhist poet-turned-Viet Cong commissar; an American civilian meeting his Vietnamese fiancée’s family; a math teacher from Hanoi in the North Vietnamese Army; a Marine captain radio operator from Pennsylvania, who immersed himself in local culture and language and then found himself unable to convince his supervisors that Hue had been overrun by conventional infantry; and President Lyndon Johnson in his pajamas in the White House with Gen. William Westmoreland, a sleepover guest who presented a rosy view of progress in Vietnam. The limited series will follow Bowden’s narrative structure to make understandable why bloody events unfolded the way they did and made clear that Vietnam was an unwinnable war for the U.S.
Michael De Luca – producer of The Social Network, American History X, Moneyball and many others – will exec produce the series, alongside Mann and FX.
We’ll bring you more news as we hear it.