HBO greenlights futuristic drama

HBO has picked up Americatown, a futuristic drama from writer Bradford Winters.

Set in the near future, the series envisions Americans fleeing the country following an economic collapse. The immigrants subsequently set up homes and communities in cities across the world.

Winters told The Hollywood Reporter that the current financial climate in the US lent the project contemporary resonance: "What is happening right now is such a terrible disaster for so many people and, in some ways, I think it makes it less hard to argue that the events in Americatown are impossible."

The project has spent a decade in development, with Winters initially designing it as a Traffic-style, multi-stranded story about immigration in present day New York.

Winters previously worked on flop JJ Abrams drama Six Degrees.