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After recreating Prohibition era Atlantic City in Boardwalk Empire, HBO is looking to resurrect Cold War era Berlin in a new spy drama project from Boardwalk executive producers Stephen Levinson and Mark Wahlberg, New Yorker writer/best-selling author Malcolm Gladwell and film/TV writer Charles Randolph (The Interpreter). Set in Cold War Berlin, the untitled project, to be written by Randolph, centers on a missionary who becomes involved in the CIA. 
Gladwell and Randolph, who are friends, had been working on an idea for a spy project when they met with Levinson and Wahlberg who had also been looking to do a spy drama. The four joined forces and took the joint project to HBO where Levinson and Wahlberg have deep ties as producers of 4 series, Boardwalk, Entourage, In Treatment and How to Make It In America. Randolph, Gladwell, Levinson and Wahlberg will all executive produce the new project, which HBO is producing in association with Levinson’s Leverage and Wahlberg’s Closest to the Hole Prods. Randolph’s latest movie, the Ed Zwick-directed Love and Other Drugs, opens next month.
TV Editor Nellie Andreeva - tip her here.
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HBO is coming back in a really big way. Boardwalk Empire is fantastic and now this? Wow.
Malcolm Gladwell is the smartest and most interesting writer working today. LOVE LOVE LOVE.
If you buy all your books at the airport bookstore, sure. The guy has made a fortune writing books that come to conclusions that are all common sense. People who are hugely successful spent huge amounts of time working at what they do? Wow!!!!!
Amen to that!
just because he can (sorta) write books doesn’t mean that he can write a screenplay. the roads of studios are littered with bestselling authors who never made the transition. the only one i can think of off the top of my head who did was michael crichton (RIP).
and btw. malcom gladwell did not coin the phrase ‘the tipping point.’
Clearly you didn’t read the article. It never said he is writing, just developing. The writer is Charles Randolph.
Please. He is not a good writer, he’s a great hype master, self promoter and marketer.
How can Wahlberg be in 5 places at once producing 5 shows? Now that is some acting job! They should both get Oscars for being so convincing and BSing HBO to such a degree!!!
not another cold war era project with russia and east european people as the enemy. don’t industry people actually ever want to license these projects around the world? people. russia has over 120M people.
The Indiana Jones films did gangbusters in Germany, despite the villains in 1 & 2 being Nazis. If the show is good, the 130M Russians will watch it just as much as the English, French, etc.
culturally, russian people are very very different than germans. Salt didn’t do very well in russia.
i think maybe it is (about time) that hollywood located some other cultural villians to beat up on. i know sometimes it’s hard. but the cold war ended 20 years ago and gen y and teens don’t even know what sh**t is.
i mean i’ve been watching films with russians as the bad guys since i was a wee one. the u.s. vs. the soviet union was something that engulfed the world at one point.
i sometimes think the biggest let down for hollywood was when the wall fell and everyone had to scramble to find new villians. esp. the james bond franchise. –which is still struggling with this.
Could bbe good. Really enjoying Eastbound and Down!
Mark Wahlberg is the executive producer of Entourage which has been very successful. He is the executive producer of How To Make It In America. Broadwalk, and several movies that have been successful. So, you don’t know what you’re talking about!
Agree that Gladwell is overrated, but he has carved out a sweet niche for himself. Well see if he can make the transition. Of course, the great William Goldman started out as a novelist– Marathon Man and Princess Bride were both novels before movies.
i’d love to see Mark Wahlberg and HBO produce a biopic or miniseries about New Kids On The Block.
Starring Johnny Drama from Viking Quest?
.. but seriously.
The CIA,again? Best CIA is the new one with Naomi Watts. We all know the story. Okay, here’s the story. Wahlberg surrounded by the best at what they do. Manager, agent, all that. He can be an exec producer by being the entity that originates the project. Then, they bring in “line producers” writers, directors, ect to do the day to day operations. Aaron Spelling did the same thing. He had thousand shows on TV. Never left the office.
However, I am not a Wahlberg fan and for HBO is not that great. Lately they show too many Marky Mark movies which are always really bad when compared to the movies they were ripped off from.
HBO should just change their name to the MARKY MARK channel. Anyway, I turned them off. You watch, they keep it up and more will follow. Bottom line. Forget the CIA. Too much CIA.
Why you think Damon stayed out of the new Bourne thing? Too much CIA. And this will be cheap CIA with no real new insight.
Gladwell, just as was Michael Crichton, IS a CIA writer whose job it is to use up the bandwith of naive readers and misdirect them away from real social science used for social control by the CIA-run media. Real scientists debunk his books as nonsense. That’s why. A handful of insider whistleblowers have warned us of the CIA’s role in media.
Try reading Victor Marchetti’s 1974 book, ‘The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence’ or…Carl Bernstein’s 1977 article based on a leaked Senate report called ‘The CIA and the Media.’ You can read this at CarlBernstein.com under “articles.” Or read Christopher Simpson’s book on how the CIA co-opted all social science and media studies at universities during the Cold War to use for what the Pentagon manuals call “Psychological Operations,” a doctrine of social control of the masses using media.
And read other ex-CIA whistleblowers such as Philip Agee, John Stockwell, and Ralph McGehee who all found out eventually that the CIA is first and foremost a media entity that controls mainstream culture.