About a million years ago, I wrote an article about HBO’s upcoming pilot “Boardwalk Empire” and how they were trying to pull Martin Scorsese to direct it. Since he’s executive-producing the show, it wasn’t too hard of a sell, and guess what? He went for it! And even better than that, Steve Buscemi is going to star.

Steve Buscemi is in talks to star in “Boardwalk Empire,” Martin Scorsese’s drama pilot for HBO.

Kelly Macdonald also is in talks for a co-starring role in the project.

Written by Terrence Winter and to be directed by Scorsese, “Empire” is based on Nelson Johnson’s book, which chronicles the 1920s origins of Atlantic City, N.J.

Buscemi would play Nucky Johnson, a cunning businessman who runs a liquor distribution ring at the onset of Prohibition.

The Scotland-born Macdonald would play Margaret, a smart Irish immigrant who married the wrong man to get out of her parents’ house.

Meanwhile, HBO just screened its pilot “East Bound and Down,” starring Will Ferrell, and a new AICN spy called Noodleman has nothing but good things to say about it.

They did a pretty fantastic job of it, too. The pilot, which was somewhere between 30-40 minutes, is laugh out loud hilarious from beginning to end. I’m personally pretty easy to please, but the whole room was dying, almost the whole time.

The show’s about Kenny Powers (McBride), who was essentially an all star pitcher for the Atlanta Braves. But, he gets cocky, and as he gets cockier, he gets less talented– By the end of the first five minutes, in a gut-busting montage of Powers’ baseball career, we see the rise and fall of Powers, and he’s fallen so far he’s living with his brother, his sister in law, their three kids, and just got a job at his alma mater (I think) as the sub gym coach.

The way he speaks to people– his family, his co workers, even the kids he’s teaching, is consistently obscene, but he seems to get away with it mainly because of who he is, fallen idol or not.

And in other news, shockingly enough, Rosie’s variety show won’t be picked up for series. What a crying shame.

Popularity: 8% [?]