Bonnie and Clyde (miniseries, 2013)

The joint Lifetime/History four-hour miniseries about one of history’s most infamous couples has cast the leading roles. Bonnie & Clyde will star Holliday Grainger and Emile Hirsch as the bank robbers who went down in a hail of gunfire.

Holliday Grainger takes on the part of Bonnie Parker, a role that Miley Cyrus was in talks for months ago. That deal fell through, and the project has gone on to find a new leading lady. Grainger has plenty of experience with period pieces, although she tends to appear in much older periods – she recently starred in Showtime’s The Borgias and also appeared in the Keira Knightley version of Anna Karenina. I imagine she’ll be grateful to ditch the corsets for this new role.

Cast as Bonnie’s soulmate and bank-robbing partner Clyde Barrow is Emile Hirsch, whose career has mostly been on the big screen in a lot of indie films. Among his credits are the starring role in the Oscar-nominated Into the Wild, the Sean Penn film Milk and just recently Prince Avalanche with Paul Rudd. He did plenty of TV guest roles back in the 90’s on shows like ER and NYPD Blue but this will be his first TV role in over a decade.

Deadline says the two will join already-cast Holly Hunter and William hurt for the mini-series. Driving Miss Daisy director Bruce Beresford is on board to direct. In an unusual move, the Lifetime developed and produced mini-series will also air simultaneously on sister channel History. It marks the first time something like that has been attempted by the family of A&E network channels.