Before James Gandolfini died in 2013, he was working with HBO to produce and possibly star in an adaptation of a book called Big Dead Place. Unsurprisingly, that project was scrapped after Gandolfini’s death, but apparently HBO has now decided that it has grieved long enough. According to Variety, the network has resurrected its Big Dead Place adaptation, and now Sopranos director Timothy Van Patten is on board. If the show does make it to air, though, Gandolfini will get a posthumous executive producer credit.
The Big Dead Place book is a memoir written by Nicholas Johnson about his time working for the U.S. government in Antarctica. Back in 2011, we reported that the story was described as “a tragicomic eye view of the fear and loathing, arrogance, and insanity of the people living and working the last untamed frontier on the planet—the research base at McMurdo Station, Antarctica.” This new incarnation of the show will probably also be like that, but with less James Gandolfini. Also, we’d make a joke here about how the show could be cursed, but that seems like it might be in poor taste.