Apple Cancels Plans to Produce Richard Gere Drama BASTARDS

Deadline reports that Apple's plans to produce a Richard Gere-led limited series based on an Israeli drama will not be going any further. "Bastards," from the Hebrew original "Nevelot," comes from FOX 21 Television.

The series, about two Army vets going on a killing spree to avenge the death of a loved one, has always been considered darker and edgier than the rest of the upcoming Apple slate. In the end, the show did not fit their global, family friendly message.

Bastards centers on two elderly Vietnam vets and best friends - one of whom is played by Gere - who find their monotonous lives upended when a woman they both loved fifty years ago is killed by a car. Their lifelong regrets and secrets collide with their resentment of today's self-absorbed millennials, and an act of self-defense snowballs into a tragic series of events.

An earlier U.S. version, from playwright Branden Jacobs Jenkins, was planned and scrapped at HBO in 2015.

Richard Gere starred on Broadway in the original production of "Grease" in 1972; he played Danny Zuko on the West End. He also starred in "Soon," "Habeas Corpus," and "Bent" throughout the 1970s.

Read the original story on Deadline.