While everyone is busy labeling Marco Polo as Netflix’s answer to Game of Thrones, HBO is looking for their own new project big enough and worthy enough of inspiring copycats, and they may have found it with a new series now in development from Executive Producers Martin Scorsese and Benicio Del Toro.
Deadline reported Tuesday that Cortes, created by Chris Gerolmo (Mississippi Burning), is a high profile drama about Hernán Cortés, the Spanish conquistador who came to the Aztec empire and eventually brought it to ruin, claiming Mexico for Spain in the process. Here’s Deadline’s full plot summary:
Cortes will tell the sweeping story of Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés, who brought down the Aztec empire; Malinche, the Mayan girl who helped him do it; and Montezuma, the Aztec leader he befriended and finally put in chains.
Deadline has Scorsese billed as both a producer and director, and they hint that Del Toro would be interested in playing the lead, adding to his resume of legendary Spanish figures Che Guevara and Pablo Escobar, and also marking Del Toro’s first major detour to television. Del Toro is teaming up with his producing partner for Che, Laura Bickford. As for Gerolmo, this is his second foray back into TV following the 2005 FX war drama Over There, which he co-created with Steven Bochco.
Scorsese meanwhile is staying very busy, least of all with HBO, developing another Rock ‘n Roll film with Terence Winter, a biopic on the Ramones and an HBO series prequel to Shutter Island.
No word just yet on when production on Cortes is expected to begin or when we can expect to see the finished product.