David Kronke was appointed Mayor of Television after a bloodless coup in 2000. Since then, he has improved infrastructure, championed greater educational opportunities and fought for reforms that have utterly erased corruption and incompetence from the television industry. Since Mr. Kronke has ascended to power, Television is a far better place. “Deadwood” in Limbo
“Deadwood” fans have pestered critics (in a nice way, that is) to demand some answers from HBO as to the fate of the two previously announced “Deadwood” films. So we did that this afternoon during HBO's TV Press Tour session.
And we got bupkis.
Michael Lombardo, president of HBO’s programming group and West Coast operations: “We’re just finishing ‘John from Cincinnati.’ David [Milch] is, needless to say, exhausted. We haven’t had a conversation with him. It’s always been our intention to do them, but it’s complicated. We don’t have a hold on the actors anymore. But we’ll know more after we know what the future of ‘John’ is. It’s definitely something we’re interested in doing.”
So someone pressed the issue.
Lombaro: “We have to bring back an array of actors, many of who have gone on to a variety of projects. … It’s doable. But it’s daunting.
“We haven’t talked to David since ‘John’ has wrapped. If David’s game for this and we can figure it out, we’ll figure it out. … If we pick up ‘John,’ David will have to go back to working on that immediately for next summer. … We’re in business with David Milch and we intend to be in business with David Milch for the foreseeable future.”
We kept at it, and this is the best we could manage:
Richard Pleppler: “It depends on whether or not the actors can be pulled together and whether David is fully committed to the project. … You could probably put it at 50/50.”
So that’s as definitive a “maybe” (with a side order of “don’t hold your breath”) as you’ll ever hear. No news, in this case, sounds like bad news.