Welcome to ‘Americatown’
HBO has announced the development of Americatown, a new drama series project from writer Bradford Winters and producers Tom Fontana, Barry Levinson, Frank Marshall and Kathleen Kennedy.
Americatown is "set 25-40 years into the future when the precipitous decline of the U.S. leads to a mass exodus of its citizens," says The Hollywood Reporter. The show focuses on newly arrived American immigrants in a large foreign city.
"By presenting Americans as immigrants in the near future, as both underdog and hero in the drama of global dislocation, we substitute a mirror for the rancor that informs much of the partisan debates on immigration," Winters said of the series.
The show focuses both on immigration and on potential financial meltdown, which is quite topical given current circumstances.
Says Winters of the irony: "What is happening right now is such a terrible disaster for so many people and, in some ways, I think makes it less hard to argue that the events in Americatown are impossible."
Winters has worked with Tom Fontana before on HBO’s prison drama, Oz. His two brothers, Scott William Winters and Dean Winters, were series regulars on the program as Cyril and Ryan O’Reily, both brothers and inmates within the titular prison facility. Though no casting announcements have been made, it’s likely that one or both actors will appear on the show in some capacity.
I'm actually looking forward to this series– it feels like taking American expat communities to the next level. Do we have any idea what country they'll be putting Americatown in? For some reason, I'm thinking Dubai…
I'm also really looking forward to this. Thinking about it, I'd love to see it done in Shanghai -it's already the world's most futuristic-looking city – but I know that would look too hackneyed (the straight Chinatown swap). My second choice would be Manchester. Having a poor subculture clashing against a rich ingrained mainstream would work especially well because all the characters speak English (man, would this help!) and also because Manchester has a history of this happening (the Indian/Pakistani immigrants since the 1960s have radically changed that city and you would get this great notion of the white Americans being confused and new to the idea of poverty, the white English staying aloof from them, and the recent Muslim immigrants having to help the white Americans. Imagine the storylines this would create!I really think they are going to have to set it in an English-speaking country (for obvious dramatic reasons) so my third choice would be India – in particular, some Indian city that most of us haven't heard of like Thiruvananthapuram (bigger than Boston according to Wikipedia!)This could potentially be my favorite series ever, or is that the wine talking?- Ryan
Glenn, Actually, Dubai isn't a country. I don't mean is ur case but 4 me, I think inmigration would be a hard task to u.S. citizens due their poor knowledge about geography (excluding their own country, obviously)