Showtime Developing Series Adaptation of SCARFACE AND THE UNTOUCHABLE
Showtime is developing a new series based on Max Allen Collins and A. Brad Schwartz’s nonfiction novel Scarface and the Untouchable: Al Capone, Eliot Ness and the Battle for Chicago. The series will tell the story of the years-long war between Al Capone and Eliot Ness.
Scarface and the Untouchable chronicles the lives of gangster Al Capone and his lawman nemesis, Eliot Ness in Prohibition-era Chicago. It’s described as “the new definitive history of gangster-era Chicago,” the book “draws upon decades of primary source research—including the personal papers of Ness and his associates, newly released federal files, and long-forgotten crime magazines containing interviews with the gangsters and G-men themselves.”
The series will dive into “prohibition-era politics, industrialization, mass media, the immigrant experience, law enforcement and the birth of organized crime. It will span from the roaring ’20s into the Great Depression, from South Side slums all the way up to the White House. It will show how Al Capone corporatized crime on a level never before imagined, and how Eliot Ness, one of the most revolutionary cops in American history, fought an uphill battle to reform law enforcement, a battle that continues to this day.”
Alex Kurtzman’s Secret Hideout, run by Heather Kadin, and CBS Studios are producing the project, which is being written by Ben Jacoby (Newsflash, Flash Boys).
The story of Al Capone and Eliot Ness has been told several times over the years, but one of the best projects was the 1987 Brian De Palma-directed film starring Kevin Costner as Ness and Robert De Niro as Capone. I love that movie! What I like about the series concept is that it will be able to get into the nitty-gritty details of the story and explore these characters in more depth.
Here’s the full description from the book:
In 1929, thirty-year-old gangster Al Capone ruled both Chicago's underworld and its corrupt government. To a public who scorned Prohibition, "Scarface" became a local hero and national celebrity. But after the brutal St. Valentine's Day Massacre transformed Capone into "Public Enemy Number One," the federal government found an unlikely new hero in a twenty-seven-year-old Prohibition agent named Eliot Ness. Chosen to head the legendary law enforcement team known as "The Untouchables," Ness set his sights on crippling Capone's criminal empire.
Today, no underworld figure is more iconic than Al Capone and no lawman as renowned as Eliot Ness. Yet in 2016 the Chicago Tribune wrote, "Al Capone still awaits the biographer who can fully untangle, and balance, the complexities of his life," while revisionist historians have continued to misrepresent Ness and his remarkable career.
Enter Max Allan Collins and A. Brad Schwartz, a unique and vibrant writing team combining the narrative skill of a master novelist with the scholarly rigor of a trained historian. Collins is the New York Times bestselling author of the gangster classic Road to Perdition. Schwartz is a rising-star historian whose work anticipated the fake-news phenomenon.
Scarface and the Untouchable draws upon decades of primary source research—including the personal papers of Ness and his associates, newly released federal files, and long-forgotten crime magazines containing interviews with the gangsters and G-men themselves. Collins and Schwartz have recaptured a bygone bullet-ridden era while uncovering the previously unrevealed truth behind Scarface's downfall. Together they have crafted the definitive work on Capone, Ness, and the battle for Chicago.
Source: Deadline