HBO is developing an ambitious, four-hour miniseries on the life and music of Frank Sinatra, officials said yesterday.
The series, a documentary, will air over four nights, sometime next year, they said.
The singer’s family is supplying never-before-seen home movies and private performances.
The series is being produced by prominent Hollywood producer Frank Marshall, who is behind the “Bourne” movie series, “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” and the 2010 HBO movie “Special Relationship” about Bill Clinton and Tony Blair.
Documentary director Alex Gibney (“Taxi to the Dark Side”) will direct the series.
Few details of the series were available yesterday, including a working title or a specific air date.
The search for a big-time Sinatra movie has been going on since he died at age 82 in 1998.
His family still controls large parts of his music library, which makes it difficult for anyone to make a movie about him without their cooperation.
“Goodfellas” director Martin Scorsese has famously been working on a scripted Sinatra movie for more than a decade, according to reports.
Last year, it was even reported that “Hunger Games” screenwriter Billy Ray has been hired to write the film.
Back in 2000, Scorsese was involved in a Dean Martin bio movie — based on the best-seller “Dino” — that was supposed to star Tom Hanks as Martin and John Travolta as Sinatra.