HBO Releases First ‘Deadwood’ Movie Teaser And A Premiere Date
The long-awaited movie sequel to the beloved HBO series, Deadwood, just edged a little closer to reality for its hordes of rabid fans with the unveiling of the first teaser clip for the film. According to Deadline, the highly anticipated movie follow-up to the three-season HBO series that ran from 2004 to 2006 will premiere on Friday, May 31.
The brainchild of creator David Milch, Deadwood premiered in 2004. It was set in the South Dakota town of the same name – a town so rough and ramshackle you can hardly call it that – as its motley denizens attempted to carve out an existence in the brutal, gritty world of the American frontier.
The movie follow-up to the 36-episode series reunites a who’s who of powerhouse actors of the past decade and going back even further than that in some cases. Returning for the movie are Timothy Olyphant, Ian McShane, Anna Gunn, Molly Parker, Paula Malcomson, and John Hawkes, along with many others. The critically acclaimed, but short-lived show was nominated for 28 Emmy Awards and took home eight trophies, as well as garnering a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Television Series, Drama category for McShane, for his portrayal of the chilling, sardonic, cruel, and hilarious bar and brothel operator Al Swearengen.
As Swearengen, McShane spent the first couple of seasons of the original series battling wits and wills with Timothy Olyphant as the newly arrived Seth Bullock, a sheriff-turned-shopkeeper who only wanted to start a new life running a country store, but whose powerful sense of right and wrong draws him into the seamy conflicts of the town.
The new movie is set 10 years further along in the town’s history, reuniting the familiar characters to celebrate South Dakota becoming a state. It promises to scrape open all the old conflicts and blood-bonds between the characters, as they are forced to adjust to a more civilized time.
The clip HBO released on Thursday features Bullock and Swearengen conversing in Swearengen’s saloon, speaking of how the town used to be a “sanctuary,” allowing a man to be “unreachable.” The clip will immediately draw old fans back into that muddy, bloody world with their banter.
“You ever think, Bullock, of not going straight at a thing?” Swearengen asks.
“No,” is Bullock’s typically terse reply.
Some other series favorites also returning for the film include Brad Dourif as the alcoholic Doc Cochran, Robin Weigert as the even more permanently inebriated Calamity Jane, William Sanderson as the unctuous E.B. Farnum, and the venerable Gerald McRaney as gold baron George Hearst.
