Is ‘Deadwood’ The Next Show To Be Made Into A Movie?

Deadwood fans, take note. Your favorite show could soon return as a movie, if reports circulating online media are to be believed.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Deadwood star Garret Dillahunt has been talking up a possible movie reboot of the highly acclaimed HBO show, which ran for three seasons between 2004 and 2006. Deadwood was a western period drama which enamored historical fiction fans in great measure, and ever since the show ended without a definitive closure about a decade ago, there have been credible whispers surrounding a possible Deadwood movie.

And last Wednesday those rumors received a shot in the arm with one of the leading actors on the show, Garret Dillahunt, confirming via twitter that he had been hearing a Deadwood movie was in the works.

Later Dillahunt also went on to almost beseech HBO, the cable network which produced Deadwood, that the show should be made into a film considering another successful HBO show, Entourage, was recently made into a movie.

One wonders if the HBO executives will warm up to the idea, especially when the movie version of the hit series, Entourage,failed to appease critics and fans alike earlier this year. In response to Dillahunt’s request, however, HBO released an official statement confirming that Deadwood’s movie adaptation was indeed been sought by the channel, with the preliminary talks already having taken place.

“In reference to Garret Dillahunt’s tweet regarding the rumored Deadwood movie, there have been very preliminary conversations.”

The Wrap reports that HBO had been planning two special Deadwood TV movies immediately the show’s completion, but the plan never came to fruition. In fact, after early talks of a possible Deadwood reboot evaporated, some of the show’s stars went on to confirm that Deadwood will not be revived. Appearing in Jon Stewart’s Daily Show in 2009, Ian McShane, the actor who played the owner of The Gem Saloon on Deadwood, reiterated his belief that “Deadwood is dead.”

However, speaking to Vulture four years later in 2013, actor Jim Beaver said the creative forces responsible behind Deadwood have always been very eager to revive it, but studio politics, more than anything, are to blame for the failure to reboot the show.

“I’ve told you before that I don’t know anybody who was on Deadwood who wouldn’t try to find a way to come back to it if they brought the show back. They came close last year to getting those long-discussed Deadwood movies going again. But the project fell apart, for what I heard through the grapevine were reasons of studio politics rather than the question of whether the creative forces involved wanted to do it.”

The tweet by Garret Dillahunt, then, comes as another hope for Deadwood fans, who are fervently waiting to visit 1870s South Dakota again. This time we can only pray something good comes out of it.

Deadwood, after all, is not dead.

[Photo by Stephen Shugerman/Getty Images]