George Clooney, Bennett Miller and 'Rescue Me' showrunner team up for new TV series

Whenever George Clooney's name is attached to a project, ears naturally perk up. So when you throw in the creator of Rescue Me, Peter Tolan, and Bennett Miller, the director of the well-buzzed Oscar contender Foxcatcher, studio heads naturally are interested.

Based on a report from Vulture, Clooney's production company, Smokehouse Pictures, is teaming with the aforementioned talented creative heads to produce a one-hour comedic drama series exploring the movie business in the early 1990s. Details, besides these, are scarce at the moment. But people surrounding the project are calling it a dark comedy looking at the movie business from the perspective of studio executives in Hollywood.

Tolan will write the pilot's script, while Miller will direct it. Clooney, at this moment, is solely involved with the project as an executive producer, which is a role he shares with Tolan and Grant Heslov, his producing and writing partner. With Tolan's experience writing for The Larry Sanders Show, this kind of craziness shouldn't be out of his wheelhouse, but Miller is most definitely an interesting choice to helm. While he only has a few films under his belt so far, those he has made, including Capote and Moneyball, are most definitely dramatic, so it'll be interesting to see how the filmmaker does stretching his funny bone.

Clooney and Tolan made the pitch for the show last week, and it appears the show will have no problem finding a home. At the moment, Sony is having meetings about the show with both basic and premium cable networks, as well as one streaming service. The only questions it'll have from them are: how much money it will need and where it will land? This pilot is part of a deal Smokehouse Pictures signed last summer with Sony Pictures Television.

This is far from Clooney's first rodeo with TV, as he — of course — made himself a household name through starring in ER. Those experiences, which accumulated in the early 90s, will very likely be part of this new series. He also produced the HBO show Unscripted alongside Heslov and Steven Soderbergh and, as Variety reports, another HBO show, the drama K Street.

In addition to this, Clooney is producing some other projects, including Hack Attack, which he will also direct, as well as Our Brand is Crisis and Money Monster, which he will star in, just to name a few. He is currently filming a role in the Coen brothers' Hail Caesar! and will next be seen in Tomorrowland on May 22, 2015. He last appeared on screen in The Monuments Men, which he also co-wrote and directed, earlier this year.

Image courtesy of INFphoto.com

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