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Director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal are back in the headlines—three years after the debut of their controversial portrait of the hunt for Osama bin Laden, "Zero Dark Thirty"—with separate projects that bring them back to familiar terrain: the so-called "War on Terror." Oscar winner Bigelow ("The Hurt Locker") is currently developing jihadi recruitment drama "The Recruiters" at HBO. Bigelow will executive producer the project, written and directed by Somali-born Canadian polymath K'naan Warsame, with former HBO president Carolyn Strauss. Bigelow last worked with HBO while directing the pilot for "The Miraculous Year," which was not picked up. For his part, Boal and his production company, Page One, have teamed up with Sarah Koenig and company for the second season of the blockbuster podcast "Serial," which debuted Dec. 10. Boal began recording his revealing, wide-ranging conversations with...

Kathryn Bigelow has found her next project, and yes, it's about America's complicated relationship with terrorism. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the director has signed on to develop The Recruiters, a drama which, according to HBO, "will draw open an iron curtain behind which viewers will see the highly impenetrable world of Jihadi recruitment." Set in Minnesota, the project is written, produced, and directed by Somali-Canadian musician and poet K'naan Warsame ("Wavin' Flag"), who has begun posting casting notices in search of a Somali lead for the show on his Facebook page. Bigelow's level of involvement could change once, and if, The Recruiters gets to the pilot stage, but she will surely bring the same depth of research seen in Zero Dark Thirty and The Hurt Locker to the project. She also has valuable experience with HBO's development process—in 2010, Bigelow directed The Miraculous Year, an hourlong drama pilot about...

Oscar-winning director Kathryn Bigelow is set to executive produce HBO's potential series "The Recruiters".

Set in Minnesota, the drama "will draw open an iron curtain behind which viewers will see the highly impenetrable world of Jihadi recruitment."

Somali Canadian rapper, singer, songwriter, poet K'naan Warsame is set to pen the script, executive produce and direct should it move to the pilot stage. Carolyn Strauss would also executive produce.

Bigelow previously directed HBO's 2010 drama pilot "The Miraculous Year".

Source: The Live Feed...

Exclusive: HBO has bought 44th Street, a Broadway-themed single-camera comedy from NewsRadio creator Paul Simms. It centers on two veteran theatre actors struggle to find success amidst a world of upstarts and critics. This expands HBO’s relationship with Simms, who wrote the project on spec specifically for the pay cable channel. Simms, whose first primetime series writing job was on HBO’s Larry Sanders Show where he rose to executive producer, has spent the past few years at the premium cable network, serving as a consulting producer on off-beat comedy series The Flight of The Conchords and a consultant on the pilot for Bored To Death. He also wrote an episode for HBO’s period drama Boardwalk Empire. Outside of TV, Simms, repped by CAA and attorney Sam Fischer, is a columnist for The New Yorker. HBO recently tackled the Broadway scene with the John Logan’s hourlong pilot The Miraculous Year,...

Update: Mark Boal‘s reps told The Playlist these reports are untrue. They either want this project to stay secret, or we really won’t be seeing Bin Laden in Bigelow’s upcoming film.

Oscar-winning The Hurt Locker director, Kathryn Bigelow, has a number of exciting projects brewing. Aside from her big-budget Triple Frontier, which will star America’s favorite everyman, Tom Hanks, she’s lined up to helm the pilot episode of HBO’s latest drama, The Miraculous Year, and a largely mysterious low-budget political drama that’s rumored to be based on a real Black-Ops event.

Hurt Locker scribe, Mark Boal, will re-team with Bigelow on the film productions, but little is else known about this last project that is currently untitled. Recent reports have slated Triple Frontier’s production for fall of 2011, and it has been rumored that the $10 mil Black-Ops project would be shot in the interim.

After HBO passed last year on the promising-sounding Sarah Michelle Gellar/Adam Scott family drama The Wonderful Maladys, centered around a neurotic New York clan, you'd think people would get the idea that the network's looking for some new stuff.

But fresh off her Oscar win for Hurt Locker, Kathryn Bigelow's first major project was a show called The Miraculous Year, starring Hope Davis, Frank Langella, Patti Lupone, and Susan Sarandon with a similar feel, centered around a high-powered (albeit less f*ckable, unless you have a thing for baby boomers) city family.

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Exclusive: HBO has opted not to proceed with John Logan's hourlong pilot The Miraculous Year, which was directed by Kathryn Bigelow. I hear that the appeal of the project -- an exploration into a high-powered New York family: a self-destructive Broadway composer (Norbert Leo Butz), his powerful painter father Alex (Frank Langella) and his attorney sister Mandy Vance (Hope Davis) -- was probably too narrow. The cast of the pilot also included Eddie Redmayne, Linus Roache and Patti LuPone as well as guest stars Susan Sarandon and Lee Pace. HBO has had a busy pilot pickup year starting with the Michael Mann/David Milch collaboration Luck, which has already been ordered to series. The Diane Keaton starrer Tilda is still awaiting word while backup scripts are being written and reshoots on the pilot are being done. HBO's recent pilot orders include the Justin Theroux/Steve Coogan comedy Documental, Armando Iannucci's comedy Veep,...

Erik Altemus made a critical decision when, in the eighth grade, he transferred to the Orange County High School of the Arts. Prior to attending the Southern California performing arts school, he went to a "stereotypical" junior high school, he says: "It was all about whether or not you were on the football team. I hated it. I was completely ridiculed, and talent didn't mean anything to those people."But enrolling in the musical theater program at Ochsa really helped him as an artist: "I was able to immerse myself 100 percent in what I did artistically. It wasn't just something I did on the side. I had academic classes, yes, but now my days were surrounded by doing what I loved to do." He adds, "All of a sudden, I was one of the popular kids and it was all about how talented you were."Several young performers who went...

Kathryn Bigelow hasn't really given herself any time off after surviving the arduous awards season gauntlet that netted her the Best Director Oscar: She sprung almost immediately into action to helm the pilot for HBO's upcoming The Miraculous Year, then hopped from there into pre-production for her next film, Sleeping Dogs (formerly titled Triple Frontier). Still, don't feel too bad for Bigelow -- as you can see above, location scouting at Brazil's Iguaçu Falls has its benefits. [The Playlist]...

Apparently we are about to see the rise of a new actor, as Brit thespian Eddie Redmayne has nabbed up yet another role.

After narrowly missing out on the lead role in Steven Spielberg’s upcoming War Horse, Redmayne turned in a solid performance in The Pillars of the Earth and recently joined the upcoming television show, The Miraculous Year, which sees Kathryn Bigelow as the show’s pilot’s director. Now The Daily Mail is reporting that the actor has joined the cast of the Simon Curtis-directed My Week With Marilyn.

Read more on Eddie Redmayne continues to take over the world, joins My Week With Marilyn…...

Exclusive: There is a saying that you've got to be an Oscar winner to get to direct an HBO pilot these days: look at Martin Scorsese (Boardwalk Empire), Alexander Payne (Hung), Bill Condon (Tilda) and Kathryn Bigelow (The Miraculous Year). Now you may need an Oscar statuette to be an episodic director on the pay cable channel too. The Silence of the Lambs director Jonathan Demme has been tapped to direct two episodes of HBO's upcoming Mike White/Laura Dern comedy series Enlightened. This marks a rare series gig for Demme, who has previously directed an episode each of Colombo (1978) and Saturday Night Live (1980). I hear he is good friends with Dern and is a fan of her work and of Enightened. The single-camera comedy created by White stars Dern as a self-destructive woman who has a spiritual awakening and decides to live an enlightened life, which creates havoc at home and work.

HollywoodNews.com: Hollywood actress Susan Sarandon has reportedly signed up for the pilot of new HBO show ‘The Miraculous Year.’

The 63 year-old will take on the role of Patty Atwood, who is the director and choreographer of the Broadway production being made in the show.

Other stars already signed up include Hope Davis, Frank Langella and Linus Roache, best known for his role in ‘Law & Order.’

The new show centres around a Broadway composer who is trying to balance his new play with his family life. It is being put together by Tony-winner John Logan and Oscar-winning director Kathryn Bigelow, who is also directing the first episode.

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Welcome to your Tuesday morning television briefing. Now that the ink has dried on Damages's DirecTV deal, Entertainment Weekly's Michael Ausiello talks to executive producers Todd A. Kessler, Glenn Kessler, and Daniel Zelman about whether the format for the serpentine legal drama will be altered for its fourth and fifth seasons, whether the budget will be affected, why Ellen has gotten past the fact that Patty tried to have her killed, who will be returning, and a host of other issues. "DirecTV wants us to do the show that we’ve been doing," said Zelman. "If anything, they want us to push what we’ve been doing even further. They’re encouraging us to be as bold as possible, which is something we strive for anyway. There have been no discussions about altering the show in any fundamental way." Except for the fact that the episodes will be longer,...

Neither a show that tries to make cancer funny, nor a show about Broadway hold much appeal for me - but hey, maybe y'all are masochists. So first up in today's big name news, Liam Neeson has joined Laura Linney, Oliver Platt, Cynthia Nixon and Reid Scott in Showtime's dramedy about cancer, The C Word. Linney plays a suburban wife and mother recently diagnosed and forced to find the lighter side of a cancerous life. The pilot will be directed by Academy Award winner, Bill Condon. Maybe it's just me, but no matter how many names they get I won't be watching.

Next up is Susan Sarandon who has signed on to HBO's The Miraculous Year. The show follows the life of a charismatic, self-destructive Broadway composer who has a new show and a dysfunctional family. Sarandon joins a star-studded cast including Frank Langella, Hope Davis, Patti LuPone and Lee Pace,...

Have a good (and good for you!) helping of TV news as you wind down your workday ...

Ratings for Sunday's (July 25) season premiere of "Mad Men" improved slightly on the show's debut numbers from last year. The show drew a record high of 2.9 million viewers, up from 2.8 million last summer. [AMC]

Auditions for Paula Abdul's CBS show "Got to Dance" have begun -- in a manner of speaking. You can register with the show's website now, but audition cities won't be announced for a while. [CBS]

Susan Sarandon is joining the Kathryn Bigelow-directed, Broadway-themed HBO pilot "The Miraculous Year," playing the director and choreographer of a Broadway show. [Deadline]

Former "Office" boss Melora Hardin is joining NBC's new drama "Outlaw," playing a high-powered lawyer and love interest for star Jimmy Smits. Gina Gershon played the role in the pilot. [Deadline]

The Will Ferrell-produced Comedy Central show "Big Lake" -- which was...

HollywoodNews.com: HBO is grabbing another star for their Broadway-themed pilot ‘The Miraculous Year.’

Susan Sarandon is reportedly going to have a recurring role on the show as a director and choreographer of the play-within-the-show, states Entertainment Weekly. The pilot episode of The Miraculous Year also has a big name director attached: Oscar winner Kathryn Bigelow.

The Miraculous Year is a show that will focus on a a Broadway composer who is juggling a new show and his family.

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Susan Sarandon is the latest addition to the pilot from writer John Logan and director Kathryn Bigelow. She is among several actors tapped for guest-staring/potential recurring roles on the pilot starring Norbert Leo Butz, Frank Langella and Hope Davis, which started filming today in New York. The Miraculous Year is described as an exploration into a high-powered New York family: Terry Segal (Butz), A wildly self-destructive and manipulative Broadway composer, trying to put on a challenging new show; his father Alex (Langella), a brilliant and powerful painter, feeling the inevitable of effects of aging; and his sister Mandy Vance (Davis), an attorney trying to distance herself from the wounding influence of art as she tries to hold her family together. Co-starring in the pilot are Eddie Redmayne as a performer in Terry’s show, Linus Roache as Mandy’s husband Scott, Patti LuPone as a Broadway star and Stark Sands as her son,...

HBO’s star-studded Broadway-themed pilot The Miraculous Year has lined up another impressive name: Susan Sarandon.

The Oscar winner has been cast in the recurring role of Patty Atwood, the director/choreographer of the play-within-the-show.

Produced by Tony winner John Logan and Oscar winner Kathryn Bigelow (who’s directing the pilot), Year centers on a wildly self-destructive and manipulative Broadway composer (played by Broadway vet Norbert Leo Butz) who’s juggling both a challenging new show and his dysfunctional New York family.

Production on the pilot begins today in New York.

Year’s impressive cast also includes…

* Hope Davis as Mandy Vance,...

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HBO's 'The Miraculous Year' is piling on an already star-studded cast, adding Susan Sarandon, according to EW.com's The Ausiello Files.

Sarandon will play Patty Atwood, the "director/choreographer of the play-within-the-show." The actress is no stranger to television, having made a guest appearance on 'ER' last year, and has appeared on 'Rescue Me.'

Earlier this month, Lee Pace ('Pushing Daisies') and Linus Roache ('Law & Order') were added to the cast, joining Hope Davis, Frank Langella, Patti LuPone, and Tony winner Eddie Redmayne. Norbert Leo Butz plays the self-destructive Broadway composer at the heart of the story.

 

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As BroadwayWorld has previously reported, Tony Award winners Eddie Redmayne, Frank Langella and Patti LuPone and Tony nominees Stark Sands and Hope Davis will be a part of the cast of The Miraculous Year, HBO's new drama pilot for about "a charismatic, self-destructive Broadway composer," written by Red scribe John Logan, reportedly inspired by Stephen Sondheim. The Hurt Locker's Kathryn Bigelow is directing the pilot, which begins shooting this summer. Both Logan and Bigelow are also executive producing the piece.

***Warning*** This article discusses some potential plot points for the HBO pilot The Miraculous Year.

While the HBO drama has only been ordered to pilot as of now, a lot of star power is involved. The potential cast includes Frank Langella, Lee Pace, Norbert Leo Butz, Eddie Redmayne and Hope Davis, the pilot's director is Oscar winner Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker), and it was written by Tony winner John Logan (Red),

With that roster of talent it almost seems impossible that HBO won’t ultimately pick up the series for 2011. And that’s a very good thing for gay viewers.

Set in the theater world of New York City, The Miraculous Year is a family drama that has at its center Terry Segal (Butz), a gay man who also happens to be a Broadway composing genius. Around him revolve a large cast that not only include his lover Frank...

Kathryn Bigelow is directing the HBO pilot The Miraculous Year but her next theatrical release will be the drug drama Triple Frontier. The title refers to the dangerous region between Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina, which is rife with organized crime, drug traffic, and even terrorist activity.

The Playlist says the newly minted Best Director may have a pretty damn fantastic cast, with three recent Academy Award winners taking a look at the project. Sean Penn, Denzel Washington, and Javier Bardem have reportedly all made noise about wanting to join the film, which like The Hurt Locker is being written by Marc Boal.

Not surprisingly, Traffic is the point of reference for the film, and The Playlist says Triple Frontier will employ the "same raw and visceral visual style" of The Hurt Locker "and will likely be a multi-lingual effort, possibly why the script will take time to develop."...

Oscar winner Kevin Kline is making his first foray into series television with an hourlong project in development at HBO.

Kline will star in and executive produce the project, penned by "Proof" writer David Auburn.

Gavin Polone and Kline's manager Judy Hofflund also are executive producing the show, about a prominent doctor (Kline) who must restart his life after serving a 15-year prison sentence for murdering his mistress.

Wme, which reps Auburn and Polone, linked the two. After hearing Auburn's pitch, Polone joined him to shape the project. Polone then told his former partner Hofflund about the project, noting that Kline would be perfect for it.

Polone's hopes for landing Kline weren't high, as the actor is constantly turning down pitches for TV shows. But when he and Hofflund called Kline, he expressed interest and boarded the project after meeting with Auburn.

With Kline conferenced in, the show was pitched...

From MTV.Com: Kathryn Bigelow made cinematic history at the 82nd Annual Academy Awards by becoming the first woman to win an Oscar in the Best Director category for her work on "The Hurt Locker." While Bigelow has plenty of cause for celebration, her victory also leads to an interesting question: What's next for the award-winning filmmaker? As of now, the 58-year-old director has two projects on her agenda, an HBO television series called "The Miraculous Year" and an upcoming feature film titled "Triple Frontier."

In "The Miraculous Year," Bigelow will leave the violent front lines of the Iraq War in favor of a street-level view of New York. The project is described by The Hollywood Reporter as a light family drama with a flamboyant Broadway personality at the story's center. Bigelow will direct the pilot episode and is an executive producer alongside writer and fellow executive producer John Logan.

Oscar-winning director set to helm pilot of HBO's 'The Miraculous Year' and, for big screen, 'Triple Frontier.'

By Josh Wigler

Kathryn Bigelow accepts the Best Director award for "The Hurt Locker" at the 2010 Oscars

Photo: Kevin Winter/ Getty Images

Kathryn Bigelow made cinematic history at the 82nd Annual Academy Awards by becoming the first woman to win an Oscar in the Best Director category for her work on "The Hurt Locker." While Bigelow has plenty of cause for celebration, her victory also leads to an interesting question: What's next for the award-winning filmmaker? As of now, the 58-year-old director has two projects on her agenda, an HBO television series called "The Miraculous Year" and an upcoming feature film titled "Triple Frontier."

In "The Miraculous Year," Bigelow will leave the violent front lines of the Iraq War in favor of a street-level view of New York. The...