Julianne Moore And Todd Haynes Reunite For Dope At HBO

One of the best things to debut on television last year was an HBO mini-series adaptation of 1941 novel Mildred Pierce (better known for the classic Hollywood film starring Joan Crawford). The gorgeously shot, impeccably acted, 8-part melodrama featured Kate Winslet, Guy Pearce and Evan Rachel Wood all under the creatively assured hand of Far From Heaven and I'm Not There director Todd Haynes. Needless to say, it earned a ton of acclaim and a boatload of Emmy nominations (18, to be exact), and now HBO is bringing Haynes back into the fold to team up with another amazing actress, Julianne Moore.

Moore and Haynes have a great history of working together, from the mesmerizing Safe to the gorgeous Douglas Sirk re-imagining Far From Heaven and his biographical rumination I'm Not There. This time they're working together on an adaptation of Sara Gran's novel Dope, with the author also writing the pilot script. TVLine adds that Haynes, "would direct the pilot and serve as a producer alongside John Wells and Christine Vachon."

Personally, I could not be more excited for this news not only because of the amazing talent and network involved but also in light of the intriguing source material. The book, written by Gran, is about a recovering drug addict (to be played by Moore) in the 1950s who somehow begins moonlighting as a private detective of sorts. This premise sounds a lot like Bored to Death but I don't imagine there will be much comedy in Dope (the drugs, the world and the characters all seem a little rougher edged).

Here's the book's full synopsis:

Josephine Flannigan should be dead by now. From an overdose, or a cop's bullet, or run down in some back alley. But after a childhood in Hell's Kitchen and a lifetime on drugs, by 1950 she's finally cleaned up her act and gotten out of trouble-or so she thinks.

Things start to look up for Josephine when a suburban couple offers her $1000 to help find their daughter, a Barnard student who's disappeared into the dark subculture of heroin addiction. But nothing is as simple as it seems. Joe's journey back into a world she thought she'd left behind becomes more vertiginous at every turn-a harrowing descent into deceit and manipulation that makes it impossible to distinguish friend from foe, and leads her to a choice that will haunt her to the end of her days.

Sounds pretty rad right? What do you think?