Not content with conquering cinema screens with Down Terrace, Kill List and last year’s Sightseers, Ben Wheatley has set his gaze upon the telly. No, he hasn’t settled in for a marathon session of Downton Abbey, he’s making a deal with US cable channel HBO to develop a thriller drama series called Silk Road.
James Vanderbilt (Zodiac) and writer/director Laeta Kalogridis have jumped aboard to executive produce the show, which HBO and the major players are keeping strictly under wraps, though the Hollywood Reporter has heard it’s in the vein of The Prisoner.
The title is usually the name for an online black market where highly illegal goods are traded and smuggled across borders. However it shakes out, we’re already intrigued at what havoc Wheatley could wreak on a cable channel, particularly one with plenty of freedom and the ability to offer decent budgets such as HBO.
Lest you start thinking this means he’ll be scaling back his film work, worry not. The ever-active Mr W is currently in post-production on English Civil War horror A Field In England (which stars Julian Barratt, Reece Shearsmith and Michael Smiley), which promises more bloody thrills and should be on our screens this year, with Wheatley then getting to work on Freak Shift. There’s no word yet for when Silk Road would air, and that assumes HBO picks it up in the first place. Still, fingers crossed! For more from the man himself, check out the pod-interview we did with him for Sightseers and head over to see a brief introduction to Wheatley’s work for anyone unfamiliar.