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In September 2008, Kevin Bacon set up at Showtime The Booths, a drama about Abraham Lincoln’s assassin John Wilkes Booth and his brother. Three years and a regime change at the pay cable network later, there is movement on the project. Oscar-nominated writer Ron Nyswaner (Philadelphia) has been tapped to write the potential series, which Bacon is still executive producing. The Booths focuses on Confederate Booth and his brothers, Edwin and Junius Brutus Jr., and chronicles their years leading up to the April 14, 1865 assassination of Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre. The brothers, sons of British Shakespearean actor Junius Brutus Booth and Mary Ann Holmes, were all stage performers. In addition to The Booths, Bacon also is executive producing a single-camera comedy at HBO based on Clint McCown’s book The Member-Guest with an eye to star. Nyswaner most recently co-wrote with Phil Dorling the feature comedy Predisposed, which is now filming with Jesse Eisenberg and Tracy Morgan starring and Dorling directing.
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The Civil War is the only war in American history where the losers get better press than the winners. The Confederacy was bad idea based on a racist belief. Those who fought for it or sympathized with it aren’t heroes.
I would watch the shit out of this show. What a fascinating idea for a program.
One of the best unproduced screenplays I’ve ever read — AMERICAN GOTHIC by Scott Smith (A Simple Plan) — is about this subject. I have a very hard time believing this will come anywhere near that script, regardless of how good of a writer Ron Nyswaner is (and he’s obviously great). The story is simply better suited for a feature than an extended series. Too bad the feature world blew this with THE CONSPIRATOR. It’s an incredible true story, and the fact that the characters are deeply flawed is a big reason why.
Oooh, a series? Booth’s movements in the last couple years before the assasination are certainly fascinating material indeed. Complicated by the fact that supposedly he was a dead-ringer for Confederate superspy Thomas Hines, and the two were often mistaken for each other.
Heck, I know three or four people qualified to write or contribute to scripts for this series based on very credible historical incidents.
The Confederate Secret Service, and Booth’s connections to it, is an area that generally only a few experts really understand even closely to fully (or at least as fully as we can) –and there is a ton of rich material there.