As Peak TV expands beyond what we thought was even possible — what was the last count, more than 420 scripted dramas? — top shelf filmmakers continue to migrate to the medium because networks are voracious for content and willing to throw the kind of money around that movie studios are reluctant to do (which is why they’re falling behind, frankly).
One of those filmmakers is Kathryn Bigelow of “The Hurt Locker,” “Zero Dark Thirty” and this summer’s most recent “Detroit.” Last summer, HBO ordered a pilot of her new drama “Mogadishu, Minnesota,” then known as “The Recruiters.” The show revolved around hidden world of Jihadi recruitment, although it was also described as a family drama about Somalis in Minneapolis. Believe it or not Minneapolis has a big Somali community, and Oscar-nominee Barkhad Abdi of “Captain Phillips” fame (who also has a role in the excellent “Good Time“) relocated from Mogadishu to Minneapolis in the 1980s.
Somali Canadian poet, rapper, singer, songwriter and filmmaker (he’s helmed many of his own music videos), K’naan Warsam was set to direct and write the pilot episode, and may have gone on to direct the whole series, but alas, now comes word that the show hasn’t been picked up by HBO.
Reporter Jeff Sneider from the Tracking Board says one of the sticking points for the cable channel was the fact that Mahershala Ali wasn’t starring in the show (hard to tell if he’s making a joke here or not).
This is the second strike for Bigelow at HBO. She previously directed the 2010 drama pilot “The Miraculous Year,” but the show also didn’t go beyond the pilot. And don’t hold your breath to see these discarded pilots, as HBO almost never lets these shows out of the vaults (we’d love to see Noah Baumbach’s “The Corrections” for example). In fact, all networks keep the shows they’re not moving forward with under lock and key, perhaps one of the major exceptions being Spike Lee’s “Sucker Free City” which wasn’t picked up by Showtime, but it was screened as a fill movie during the Toronto International Film Festival in 2004. Of course, there’s Amazon‘s industry breaking pilot program, where they essentially let user feedback weigh in on which shows they’ll take to series. Alas, it doesn’t seem like K’naan and Bigelow will have as much luck.
HBO passes on Kathryn Bigelow's Somalis-in-Minnesota pilot. I hear the big problem was that it didn't star Mahershala Ali. #MahershalaOrBust
— Jeff Sneider (@TheInSneider) September 1, 2017