All right, listen up, you shitheel cocksuckers, because Ian McShane is only going to say this once, unless of course he gets interviewed about it a bunch more times, which he almost undoubtedly will: He’d be fucking thrilled to do a Deadwood movie, okay? In a new interview with Entertainment Weekly, the actor expresses enthusiasm for returning to the role of Al Swearengen, and not just because it will allow him to speak the way he likes to anyway, but without the shocked glances. “Of course I’d love to reprise that,” McShance says, while somehow managing to not spit on the floor and knock out some goddamned bastard’s teeth. He goes on:
How could one not, when it was snatched away rather unjustly by a combination of forces we’ll never know about—hubris or money or whatever. But [Deadwood] certainly finished too early. At the time, most of us working on the show were incredulous. It’s been announced by HBO so its not like I’m saying it. I know for a fact David is working on the script. It’s been 10 years since it finished. [Star Timothy Olyphant’s] free from Justified. I’m hoping they’ll make the deal soon, for two or four hours, whatever they decide on.
This makes it sound like there’s still some work to be done before HBO’s official greenlight of the movie—which was announced earlier this year—actually turns into a production. Still, McShane knows what he knows, you fucking sons of bitches, and is more than happy to speculate about what it will involve. “I’m sure David will decide to set it 10 years later, after the great fire or whatever happened in Deadwood. They haven’t done the deal yet. They [were planning] to do it late this year or early next year,” he says. Hopefully it will have a better fate than David Milch’s similarly shut-down-before-its-time Luck, as long as HBO can keep the horse deaths to a minimum.