HBO Orders ‘The Plot Against America’ Miniseries From David Simon, Ed Burns

HBO has picked up a new David Simon/Ed Burns miniseries which paints a hypothetical U.S. reality that feels frighteningly relevant and less farfetched following the Pittsburgh Synagogue massacre.

The six-part The Plot Against America, based on the praised Philip Roth novel, comes from Annapurna Pictures and Joe Roth. It imagines an alternate American history told through the eyes of a working-class Jewish family in New Jersey, as they watch the political rise of Charles Lindbergh, an aviator-hero and xenophobic populist, who becomes president and turns the nation toward fascism.

Frequent collaborators Simon and Burns are writing and executive producing. Also executive producing the miniseries are Joe Roth and producing partner Jeffrey Kirschenbaum, another long-time Simon collaborator, Nina Noble, Annapurna’s Megan Ellison, Sue Naegle — the former HBO entertainment president — and Susan Goldberg as well as Philip Roth. Dennis Stratton is co-executive producing.

Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America, which has been called a masterwork of counterfactual history, was published in 2004. It is an alternative history in which Franklin D. Roosevelt is defeated in the presidential election of 1940 by Lindbergh and follows the fortunes of the Roth family during the Lindbergh presidency, as antisemitism becomes more accepted in American life and Jewish-American families like the Roths are persecuted on various levels.

Simon and Burns previously partnered on the HBO series The Wire and miniseries The Corner and Generation Kill. At his long-time network home, HBO, Simon currently has period drama series The Deuce, which is headed into its third and final season.

Annapurna has the upcoming series Mixtape at Netflix where the company also has Coen brothers’ The Ballad of Buster Scruggs.