Delaying anew his seeming perpetual need of a good four-hour nap, Philip Seymour-Hoffman is developing the new HBO series Upstate with actor-playwright Bob Glaudini (who wrote Hoffman’s directorial debut Jack Goes Boating) and Hung writer Brett C. Leonard. Like Leonard’s other TV creation, Upstate focuses on a man who’s the victim of a faltering U.S. economy, though instead of becoming a male prostitute, the laid-off protagonist takes a job as a prison guard, where he merely observes them. Or maybe not: All we know is that he “encounters conflict and danger inside and outside the prison walls”—possibly stemming from the fact that the rural small town it’s set in makes a lot of money off the prison—so any resemblance to HBO’s Oz will probably be incidental. So far it doesn’t appear as though Hoffman is attached to act in any capacity, so maybe he can finally get some sack time.
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