Starz greenlights Steven Soderbergh’s ‘Girlfriend Experience’ series

Writer-director Steven Soderbergh’s new TV series “The Knick� hasn’t yet premiered on Cinemax, but he’s already moving on his next TV project. On Monday Starz announced it had greenlit “The Girlfriend Experience,� an anthology series based on Soderbergh’s film of the same name.

The series is inspired by Soderbergh’s 2009 film, which starred porn star Sasha Grey as a high-end Manhattan call girl dealing with the day-to-day troubles of that profession. The series expands on that idea, following a new woman in a different city from for the 13-episode arc.

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FOR THE RECORD
An earlier version of this post misspelled Sasha Grey’s last name as Gray. Also, the series was originally described as having a new woman in a different city for each episode. The series will follow a single woman for the first 13 episode arc.
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Soderbergh is executive producing along with Philip Fleishman, but the writing and directing will be handled by indie filmmakers Lodge Kerrigan and Amy Seimetz.

Kerrigan was writer-director of films “Clean, Shaven,� “Keane� and “Rebecca H. (Return to the Dogs)� and has recently directed episodes of “Homeland,� “Bates Motel� and “The Americans.�

Seimetz has worked mostly as an actress but also wrote and directed the 2012 film “Sun Don’t Shine.�

In a statement Fleishman said of the fictional subjects of the series, “Many of these women are extremely accomplished. They range from musicians in major orchestras to PhD candidates in the sciences and often feel empowered by the control and economic freedom their work as GFE’s affords them. The question is whether they define a new genus of contemporary relationship, or have relationships always been transactionally based in one form or another?�

Either way, this series will probably have a lot of naked people.

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