What does Edward Norton do with the all spare time he affords by forgoing opportunities like joining "The Avengers"? By turning his hand to producing interesting projects like this, we guess.Asked what's on horizon, Norton recently revealed he is currently in the process of developing a mini-series adaptation of "Band Of Brothers" author Stephen Ambrose's novel about the Lewis & Clark expedition, "Undaunted Courage," hopefully for television.
"We’re trying to make this big — HBO is doing all these historical miniseries, which I think they’ve done an amazing job with a couple of them," Norton told A.V. Club. "We’re trying to produce one for them about Lewis and Clark. There’s that Stephen Ambrose book, 'Undaunted Courage,' about the Lewis and Clark expedition. We’re trying to assemble that, and it’s very big. It’s so out of scale with anything my partners and I have produced. It’s a very interesting set of equations to get something like that made. We’re pretty thick in that right now."
Soldiers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark lead a team backed by Thomas Jefferson on an expedition to the Pacific Coast and back, the first overland one of its kind, which was instrumental in paving the way for much of the westward expansion of the United States. Here's a short synopsis of Ambrose novel about the tale, courtesy of Amazon.A biography of Meriwether Lewis that relies heavily on the journals of both Lewis and Clark, this book is also backed up by the author's personal travels along Lewis and Clark's route to the Pacific. Ambrose is not content to simply chronicle the events of the "Corps of Discovery" as the explorers called their ventures. He often pauses to assess the military leadership of Lewis and Clark, how they negotiated with various native peoples and what they reported to Jefferson. Though the expedition failed to find Jefferson's hoped for water route to the Pacific, it fired interest among fur traders and other Americans, changing the face of the West forever."If we can get something like this Lewis and Clark thing made, it will be really interesting for us. It’s like making 'Lonesome Dove' or something. It’s something you don’t really expect to do more than once. And if we get it together, John Curran is going to direct it, which will be really fun." No word yet on whether Norton will feature in an acting capacity at all.
As for its prospects, we're sure cable television would eat up something like this — a perfect companion project for the plethora of strong projects set to hit screens within the next year or so. And with the success of Martin Scorsese and Terrence Winter's collaboration on "Boardwalk Empire," surely the way has already been paved for more and more cinematic talent to transition to the small screen.
