HBO has lured Jake Gyllenhaal to TV with a series about a delusional hedge fund manager

Another famous movie actor has apparently fallen on hard times, forcing them to take on a demeaning TV job to make a few extra bucks on the side. According to Variety, Jake Gyllenhaal is going from receiving Academy Award nominations to—ugh—HBO, and he’s going to star in a limited series based on Gary Shteyngart’s novel Lake Success. Granted, an HBO limited series is as close as TV gets to the bright lights of Hollywood, but it’s still technically TV, and this will still be Gyllenhaal first leading role on a TV show (the poor, poor guy).

The show will star Gyllenhaal as a “narcissistic, self-deluded, and hilariously divorced-from-the-real-world hedge fund manager” named Barry Cohen who runs away from “his family, his past, and the SEC on a cross-country bus ride in search of his college girlfriend and a last chance at romantic redemption.” That sounds fun, but unfortunately, he leaves behind a “brilliant wife” (who “begins a tragicomic love affair of her own”) and their son. A lot of that sounds more tragic than comic (or even tragicomic), but we’ll see how it goes.

Meanwhile, if anybody wants to float some bucks at the Gyllenhaal family, it would be greatly appreciated.