Oscar winner signs up to star in new series about infamous Irish-American gang
Oscar winner J.K. Simmons has signed up to star in a brand new TV series about infamous Irish-American gang The Westies.
From the co-creator of Godfather of Harlem, Narcos, and Narcos: Mexico, Chris Brancato, The Westies is an eight-part series set in 1980s New York City.
The show takes place when 'the construction of the Jacob Javitz Convention Centre on the Westies' home turf in Hell's Kitchen promises a financial windfall.'
'Despite being outnumbered fifty-to-one by the Five Families of the Italian Mafia, the Westies' legendary brutality and cunning have given them the leverage necessary to share the spoils through a fragile détente,' the show synopsis continues.
JK Simmons (Getty Images)
News in 90 Seconds - May 30th
'But internal conflict between the brash younger generation and the old-school leadership threatens to set a match to this powder keg, which will sweep the Westies into the FBI's ever-deepening investigation into the Italian mafia.'
The show was created by Brancato and Michael Panes, who will both serve as executive producers.
The series is set to begin filming in Toronto, Canada this July.
J.K Simmons (70) is a multi-award-winning actor.
His credits include Whiplash, Juno, Justice League, La La Land, and Red One.
He is set to play the role of Eamon Sweeney – 'the charismatic but ruthless leader of The Westies whose old-school charm and neighborhood loyalty mask fierce criminal ambition and calculated brutality.'
The Westies were a Manhattan-based Irish-American organised crime outfit.
Their activities included racketeering, drug trafficking, burglary, illegal gambling, fraud, and carrying out contract killings.
According to the NYPD, they're responsible for between 60 to 100 murders spanning 18 years from 1968 to 1986.
The gang was founded in the 1960s and was led by James Coonan until he was jailed for 75 years in 1988.
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BBC drama Mix Tape, a tale of star-crossed lovers who bond over music, is coming to RTÉ soon but can it reinvigorate the lost art of the mix tape as musical love letter? It was a teenage rite of passage and also what the kids now call a major flex. Making a mixtape was a labour of love, a musical way into the heart of the one you fancied and also a proud artefact of just how very good your taste in music really was. Carefully pressing the right buttons on your twin tape deck, choosing the tracks of your hopes and dreams and lovingly inscribing the song titles and artists on the inlay card became something of a minor artform back in what some people probably correctly call simpler times. Van Morrison called it the inarticulate speech of the heart and for millions of seventies, eighties and nineties kids, the mixtape was the musical equivalent of the love letter - the spark for countless nervous conversations and maybe even debates. 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It was also filmed entirely on location in Dublin and Sydney. And so, the former steel town of Sheffield is played by Dublin's Liberties (I was tickled to see that some of it was shot on the very street where I live), while location filming was also completed in Australia. However, things get seriously meta when the young Alison actually moves to actual Dublin and young Daniel nearly has a whitey on the actual Ha'penny Bridge when he sees her with another bloke. Strangely, no U2 was used in the making of this programme. Based on the novel by Jane Sanderson and adapted for television by Irish writer Jo Spain, the show stars Teresa Palmer as the adult Alison and Jim Sturgess as the adult Daniel and Rory Walton-Smith as young Daniel and Florence Hunt as young Alison. And here's the thing, the actors who play the younger versions of our protagonists are so much better than the anguished grown-up versions, who spend most of the time moping about like extras in a Cure video. 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