During last night’s programming, HBO transported viewers back to the 1970s with a brand new trailer for The Deuce. The upcoming TV drama, which centers around the early days of the porn industry in New York City, stars James Franco and Maggie Gyllenhaal, the former of which pulls double duty playing twins Vincent and Frankie Martino. See a bustling, yet seedy city at the cusp of a billion-dollar industry in the footage below…
The Deuce comes to us from HBO royalty David Simon and George Pelecanos, who both are looking to continue their streak of bringing ground-level, city-focused dramas to the network. Pelecanos has worked as a writer and producer on Simon’s The Wire and Treme, which took place in Baltimore and New Orleans, respectively. Those shows ran for several seasons, although Treme never found an audience as passionate as The Wire’s, so if The Deuce performs similarly, it has a long future ahead of it.
This isn’t the first foray into television for Franco or Gyllenhaal in recent years; Franco led the Hulu miniseries 11.22.63 and popped up frequently on Angie Tribeca, while Gyllenhaal starred in the BBC’s The Honourable Woman.
The Deuce follows the story of the legalization and subsequent rise of the porn industry in New York’s Times Square from the early 1970s through the mid-1980s, exploring the rough-and-tumble world at the pioneering moments of what would become the billion-dollar American sex industry.
The rest of the show’s cast is rounded out by Emily Meade, Anwan Glover, Gary Carr, Michael Rispoli, Jamie Neumann, Lawrence Gilliard Jr. and more; the eight-episode first season will debut on September 10th.