Showtime’s Super Pumped star Joseph Gordon-Levitt has lined up legendary role for a new show. According to Deadline, the Inception actor is rumored to appear as the late-night icon, Johnny Carson, in a new biopic series. Entitled King of Late Night, the series is currently being shopped by its creator David Milch (Deadwood, John From Cincinnati) and series director, Jay Roach (Game Change, Bombshell).
Deadline reports Milch was approached by co-producer, Anonymous Content, to develop the series five years ago. Soon Roach joined the project as he and Milch serve as executive producers along with Gordon-Levitt and indie studio, wiip. The series will chronicle Carson’s trailblazing career which propelled him as the face of late-night with The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. Apart from his years-long stint in show business, the series will also peer at his life behind the scenes, and how his staunchly private life clashed with his public persona.
Carson’s life has been the focus of projects before, but all attempts failed before launch. According to Deadline, a film and NBC miniseries sought to tell the native Nebraskan’s life story. Both iterations would have based their scripts on Bill Zehme’s (Lost in the Funhouse: The Life of Andy Kaufman, Hef’s Little Black Book) autobiography Carson The Magnificent: An Intimate Portrait, published in 2007. As far as Carson appearing elsewhere on-screen, his likeness was alluded to in the 2017 TV series, There’s…Johnny!, about the behind-the-scenes workings of the show he hosted for 30 years. The show was created by Mad About You’s Paul Reiser and David Steven Simon (The Wayans Bros., In the Mood). HBO’s film, The Late Shift, had Rich Little (Love on a Rooftop, Better Off Dead) portray Carson in 1996.
According to Deadline, Paul Lee (Fresh Off the Boat, How to Get Away With Murder) and David Flynn (CSI: Miami, Mare of Easttown) are executive producers from wipp. They are joined by Paul Green (Triple 9, and Salmira Productions.