Here’s your first exclusive on-set look at Emile Hirsch and Holliday Grainger — starring as American outlaws Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker in the upcoming miniseries “Bonnie & Clyde.”
Executive Producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron thought they were creating the miniseries just for the History Channel. But when they completed filming, they got a call that “Bonnie & Clyde” would be much bigger.
“The Lifetime people said, ‘We think this script is really great and we’d like to share it and we said, ‘Oh, wow, two networks!’ ” Zadan recalls. “Then, A&E contacted us and said, ‘It’s no longer two networks, it’s three networks.’ ”
“We think we’re going to get a big, big, big audience for this,” Meron adds.
The massive, four-hour, two-night event will be simulcast across History, A&E and Lifetime Sunday, Dec. 8 and Monday, Dec. 9.
And if last winter’s “Hatfields & McCoys” miniseries on History is any indication — a record-breaking 13.9 million viewers tuned in for that — Zadan and Meron could be right about those big ratings.
The executive producers landed their first-choice for the role of Clyde — Hirsch, known for films “Savages” and “Into the Wild.”
“We said we wanted an Emile Hirsch-type for the role,” Zadan says. “So we were thrilled when he was cast.”
And they wanted a fresh, new face for Bonnie, who will be played by Grainger (“The Borgias”).
Rounding out the cast will be Oscar winners Holly Hunter and William Hurt, along with Sarah Hyland (“Modern Family”) and Lane Garrison (“Prison Break”).
Zadan and Meron say their telling of the classic tale is a little different than what we’ve seen before.
“What appealed to me and to Neil was it was a really psychological telling of the story,” Zadan says. “It really reveals to the audience today that Bonnie, in a certain odd way, was the first reality star.”
“She was somebody who really wanted to be a celebrity. She wanted to be a singer, she wanted to be an actress, she applied to all the movie studios. All she wanted was to become famous and, at the end of the day, she didn’t really care why she became famous.”
The infamous couple were killed in a bloody shootout with cops in the Louisiana backwoods in 1934.