Brad Pitt, Tom Hanks, and Ed Norton are making a Lewis & Clark show for HBO (starring none of them)
As jaded and hate-filled as most TV viewers are, people still get excited when a real celebrity is attached to a small-screen project. It’s like welcoming a member of some magical royal family from space into your home, but you don’t need to change out of sweatpants or anything to impress them. Just imagine turning on your TV and seeing Edward Norton, Tom Hanks, and Brad Pitt, all at once. It would be like staring into a wonderful, beautiful sun. Now imagine that you’re not actually seeing those three guys, you’re just seeing their names listed in the ending credits of a TV show. Still just as amazing, right?
Good, because that’s all you’re gonna get from HBO’s upcoming Lewis And Clark miniseries. Hanks, Norton, and Pitt are executive producing it (along with Dede Gardner and Gary Goetzman, who aren’t nearly as famous), which means that, unfortunately, they won’t all be starring in it. That’s despite the fact that seeing Pitt and Norton as the explorers and Hanks as Sacagawea would be incredible, but whatever. It’s fine, because they found a pair of actors that are just as great to play the leads: Famous little brother Casey Affleck and The Loft’s Matthias Schoenaerts. We don’t know about you, but we’re just as excited as we were when we were pretending that Pitt, Hanks, and Norton were starring in it!
The six-hour miniseries is based on Stephen E. Ambrose’s Undaunted Courage, and it has just been greenlit by HBO. Production is set to begin this summer, so look for Lewis And Clark to start picking up Emmy nominations—regardless of its quality—at some point after that.