Whisky All Around, Deadwood Movie Script IS Finished, “Thrilling And Heartbreaking”

The pain of having a favorite show canceled before the full story is told is crushing.  Fans of epic series like Rome, Carnivale, and Deadwood know EXACTLY what I’m talking about.

Way ahead of it’s time, the HBO series was set in a mining town that was not part of any U.S. state or territory in the post-Civil War years, and thus was literally lawless. Larger than life Americana characters like Wild Bill Hickok (Keith Carradine), Calamity Jane (Robin Weigert), Wyatt Earp (Gale Harold) and newspaper magnate George Hearst (Gerald McRaney) populate the three season plot, tying the history of the existing place to the fabulous script work by David Milch and co.  Deadwood won much critical acclaim, winning no less than 8 Emmys, unheard of at the time for a premium cable series.

A big giant part of what made the series so special was the interplay between series leads Al Swearengen (Ian McShane) and Sheriff Seth Bullock (Timothy Olyphant). Swearengen runs the lower-end but no less respected Gem Saloon; gambling den, watering hole, and whore house as well as a far reaching iron hand influence on the rest of the town. Bullock is a good guy, maybe he doesn’t make the best decisions in the world, but he really does mean well. When these two swaggering guys finally physically clash after half a season of taunting each other, it’s both a relief and catalyst.

A Deadwood movie has long been rumored (and largely dismissed by HBO proper), Milch has danced around the subject for years.  Each time it gets brought up, there are no set answers from the network or from the series creator, but the rumors persist.

Last year, HBO’s president of programming Michael Lombardo said Milch had the network’s “commitment” to make a movie, FINALLY confirming that yes, there was an actual script in development, but nothing more concrete than that.  But during the press junkets for STARZ’s American Gods McShane claimed to have read a finished script for the film, and that HBO was moving forward with them.

With dialog bordering on Shakespearean, (really, it’ll take an episode at least to get into the flow of the words) the colorful cursing and casual use of the word “cocksucker”, the script for such a film is arguably the most important part of this proposed film.  That, and the return of the cast (largely rumored to be all in for picking up their dusty coats and hats).

Another cast member tweeted last night that he had READ this finished script, W. Earl Brown who played Swearengin’s right hand man Dan Dority posted the following:

I’ve read the DEADWOOD film script.

It’s stunning.

— W. Earl Brown (@WEarlBrown) May 2, 2017

The hour and half it took me to read was fucking thrilling and fucking heartbreaking…

— W. Earl Brown (@WEarlBrown) May 2, 2017

This is EXTREMELY promising, and hopefully this public declaration will prove fruitful for fans (including the cast) of the series.  As much as revisits and revivals are a cliche in the current tv/film climate, a return of such a prolific and special series could be just what Doc Cochran ordered.