Samuel L. Jackson and Tommy Lee Jones to Star in HBO Adaption of 'The Sunset Limited'

Variety reports that Tommy Lee Jones and Samuel L. Jackson will star in an HBO production of The Sunset Limited, a play by Cormac McCarthy. The film version, adapted by McCarthy from his play will be produced by Barbara Hall and Tommy Lee Jones *who will also direct) and will begin production in New Mexico. 

The Sunset Limited  is written by Cormac McCarthy, the famed novelist who wrote All the Pretty Horses and Blood Meridian.  The show is "about an encounter between two strangers on a New York City subway platform."  Austin Pendleton and Freeman Coffey starred in the New York production of the show at 59E59 Theatre as well as in the original production at Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre Company.

The play involves only two nameless characters, designated "White" and "Black", their respective skin colors. Offstage, just before the play begins, Black saves White from throwing himself in front of a train, the Sunset Limited. All of the action takes place in Black's spare apartment in urban New York, where the characters go (at the behest of Black) after their encounter on the platform. Black is an ex-convict and an evangelical Christian. White is an atheist and a professor. They debate the meaning of human suffering, the existence of God, and the propriety of White's attempted suicide.

Photo Credit: Walter McBride/Retna Ltd.