Looks Like That TV Series Based On THE DEPARTED Is Headed For Amazon

Back in February, we brought you the news that Martin Scorsese's The Departed was being adapted for television. At the time, all we really knew about it would be neither a sequel nor a prequel to Scorsese's film.

Today, we learned a bit more. For one thing, the project will be a joint venture between Warner Bros. and Amazon Studios. For another, Variety's report on the matter delivers the first plot synopsis we've heard yet for the series. Here's how they're describing it:

"The new spin on Departed revolves around a young cop who infiltrates a Latino gang in Chicago and battles the gang’s own plant in the police department. Like Departed, the series adaptation is also inspired by the 2002 Hong Kong crime thriller Infernal Affairs.”

If you paid very close attention to how producer Roy Lee described this project back in February, this probably won't come as much of a shock. Even then it was clear that this version of The Departed would be so largely in name only, adopting the basic framework of both the Scorsese film and Infernal Affairs to an entirely new story. At the time, I compared the whole thing to what FX and Noah Hawley have done with Fargo, and it seems like that was correct.

So, when will The Departed arrive on Amazon? We're probably a ways out, so expect many more updates between now and then. In the meantime, I strongly advise that you pass at least some of the time watching Amazon's newly-launched Jean-Claude Van Johnson.