Movie Trailer Weekly Round-Up: Treme and Boardwalk Empire

This week in the trailer round-up we’re leaving the movie theaters and heading to our living room for two new sneak peaks from HBO. The first is the much-anticipated new show from The Wire creator David Simon and the second is the much-anticipated show from the writer of The Sopranos and Martin Scorsese.

I for one couldn’t be more excited for both, even though one of these trailers is a step above the other.

Treme
Release date: April 2010

The deal: David Simon takes us away from the streets of Baltimore and into the lives and neighborhoods of New Orleans musicians with his latest HBO project, Treme. The clever trailer suggests that, despite the specific changes in setting and characters, Treme will very much feel like The Wire. The absence of people in the trailer also suggests that the show will follow in The Wire’s footsteps and act as a examination of a city instead of just a drama with people. And even though you don’t see them in the below video, Treme boasts a seriously impressive cast: The Wire’s Wendell Pierce and Clarke Peters, The Corner’s Khandi Alexander (The Corner was a book written and adapted for HBO by Simon), Steve Zahn, Kim Dickens, Melissa Leo and Rob Brown.   

April can’t come soon enough; if it were up to me there would always be a David Simon show on TV. Nobody else is creating work that so viscerally forces us to examine the world we live in.



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Boardwalk Empire
Release date: September 2010

The deal: Adapted from Nelson Johnson's book, Boardwalk Empire: The Birth, High Times, and Corruption of Atlantic City, Boardwalk Empire is the latest HBO offering from screenwriter and producer Terence Winter, of Sopranos fame. The story follows a group of people in Atlantic City during the Prohibition era and boasts one of the best casts I’ve seen in some time. Steve Buscemi, anyone? How about Kelly MacDonald, Michael Pitt, Michael Shannon, Shea Whigham, Michael K. Williams, Paz de la Huerta, Dabney Coleman, Michael Stuhlbarg and Stephen Graham? Can't wait. 

The trailer is a bit of the let-down, especially considering that the pilot episode is directed by Martin Scorsese, but all the names above have me convinced that this will be the next big television show.