Deadline is reporting that Jon Bernthal (The Walking Dead, The Punisher, Those Who Wish Me Dead), Emmy nominee Josh Charles (The Good Wife, Away, The Loudest Voice), and Jamie Hector (The Wire, Bosch, Queen of the South) will star as the lead’s in HBO’s six-hour limited series We Own This City, based on Justin Fenton’s book We Own This City: A True Story of Crime, Cops and Corruption. The project hails from The Wire’s executive producer David Simon and producer George Pelecanos with Reinaldo Marcus Green (Monsters and Men) attached to direct and executive produce.
The series will mark the third collaboration between Bernthal and Green, following Warner Bros.’ King Richard, starring Will Smith and releasing on November 19, and Amazon’s drama series The Bottoms, created, co-written by, and starring Bernthal.
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We Own This City chronicles the rise and fall of the Baltimore Police Department’s Gun Trace Task Force — and the corruption and moral collapse that befell an American city in which the policies of drug prohibition and mass arrest were championed at the expense of actual police work.
Pick up your copy of Fenton’s novel here!
Bernthal will play Sgt. Wayne Jenkins of the Baltimore Police Department, “perhaps the central figure in the sprawling federal corruption case that centered on the agency’s Gun Trace Task Force, a plainclothes unit that went completely rogue and began hunting and robbing citizens and drug dealers alike as decades of a relentless drug war and mass incarceration in Baltimore spun wildly out of control.”
Charles is set to star as Daniel Hersl, a “cocky, swaggering cop known amongst Baltimore residents for his casual brutality and was the subject of multiple citizen complaints. Hersl was effectively banned from the Eastern District before his move to the GTTF.” Hector will portray Sean M. Suiter, “a Baltimore City Homicide detective who was caught up in the GTTF case and called to testify before a federal grand jury. Tragically, Suiter finds he can’t outrun his past.”
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We Own This City will be written by Simon, Pelecanos, and Dwight Watkins along with The Wire writers Ed Burns and Bill Zorzi. Simon, Pelecanos, and Burns executive producer with HBO’s former President of Miniseries Kary Antholis and Green. Zorzi also serves as co-executive producer.
