Armando Iannucci Reveals More Details About His “Space Tourism” HBO Series ‘Avenue 5’

Perhaps now, more than ever, we need Armando Iannucci. The filmmaker has always managed to perfectly skewer the world of politics from “The Thick Of It” to “In The Loop” to “Veep” to the upcoming “The Death Of Stalin.” However, in the era of Donald Trump, Iannucci believes that the President himself is creating material that is so bizarre, that it bests the finest efforts of comedy writers.

“He is his own satirist; that’s the problem,” Iannucci said at the Goteborg Film Festival. “He’s his own comedian, and he lives in the world that only exists in his head. And everything that exists in his head is a great idea and is true […] And if we disagree, as far as he’s concerned, we’re either idiots or unpatriotic.”

No matter, Iannucci is distinctly stepping away from politics for his next project, a take on Charles Dickens‘ “David Copperfield” for BBC Films, first announced a few years back. Details are still thin on the ground for this one, except that it’ll feature his trademark “sensibility”. Otherwise, “this won’t be a strange departure.”

After that, Iannucci is head back to HBO for “Avenue 5,” All that we’ve known so far is that it’s a sci-fi show set in space, but he’s revealed a bit about what he’s cooking up and it sounds great.

“All I can tell you is that it is set in the world of space tourism in about 30-40 years’ time, and it’s going to be called ‘Avenue 5.’ It’s basically about people who have nothing in common apart from being in space, and they’re trying to work out how to get on with each other. We’ll be shooting the pilot by the end of the year,” Iannucci said.

Damn, sign us up. Looks like Iannucci has plenty more coming, and we couldn’t be more thrilled. [Cineuropa]