Though David Simon’s “The Deuce” is set to wrap up its third season next year, HBO is staying business with the former “Wire” creator.
The pay cable network has given a production commitment to Simon’s adaptation of the Philip Roth book, “The Plot Against America,” which will be a six-part miniseries.
Based on Roth’s 2004 book, the series imagines an alternate American history told through the eyes of a working-class Jewish family in New Jersey, as they watch the political rise of Charles Lindbergh, an aviator-hero and xenophobic populist, who becomes president and turns the nation toward fascism. In the novel, Lindbergh defeats Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1940 presidential election, with the story based on his own isolationist ideas from Lindbergh’s days as a spokesman for the America First Committee.
Simon and Ed Burns will serve as writers and executive producers. Joe Roth, Nina Noble, Megan Ellison, Sue Naegle, Susan Goldberg, Jeff Kirschenbaum, and Philip Roth will executive produce, with Dennis Stratton co-executive producing.
Simon has been a key fixture at HBO for the better part of the 21st century. His critically-acclaimed drama “The Wire” ran for five seasons between 2002 and 2008, and his follow-up, the New Orleans-set “Treme,” aired for three seasons between 2010 and 2013. Simon co-created “The Deuce” with George Pelecanos, which tracks the rise of the porn industry in 1970s New York. That series just finished its second season on Sunday and will conclude next year.
The upcoming miniseries also comes as Amazon just premiered the third season of “The Man in the High Castle,” a similarly-themed drama based on Philip K. Dick’s novel of the same name, which imagines a world where the Axis powers won World War II.