‘The Wire’ Creator David Simon Axes Texas Filming Of New HBO Project Over Abortion Ban Law

David Simon isn’t messing with Texas, he’s done with the place — at least as a location.

The Wire creator took to social media this week to announce and reiterate he will not film an upcoming Lone Star-set HBO project in the state due to the odious abortion ban law recently put in place.

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If an employer, this is beyond politics. I’m turning in scripts next month on an HBO non-fiction miniseries based on events in Texas, but I can’t and won’t ask female cast/crew to forgo civil liberties to film there. What else looks like Dallas/Ft. Worth? https://t.co/q6Py6XikYh

— David Simon (@AoDespair) September 20, 2021

Already heading to the courts due to a challenge by the federal government and at least two suits arising out of a San Antonio physician revealing in the press this past weekend that he had recently performed an abortion in Texas, the new law went into effect earlier this month after the conservative dominated SCOTUS declined to block it.

Essentially a vigilante move, the GOP-backed Texas law outlaws a women’s right to choose once she is six weeks into her pregnancy. While defined as when a fetus develops a heartbeat, the month and a half timeline is often before many women even know they are pregnant. An open carry challenge to the widely threatened Roe v. Wade, the Texas law weaponizes citizens to bring civil actions of $100,000 or more against almost anyone who was a part of the process of a women getting an abortion in the state after six weeks of pregnancy.

Never one to mind his Ps and Qs, Simon unsparingly took on the offended Monday and Tuesday, including the de facto Dallas Film Commission:

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You misunderstand completely. My response is NOT rooted in any debate about political efficacy or the utility of any boycott. My singular responsibility is to securing and maintaining the civil liberties of all those we employ during the course of a production. https://t.co/cSKZu08uOO

— David Simon (@AoDespair) September 20, 2021

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Honolulu would work but for the palm trees, shoreline and absence of square-headed, all-hat-no-cattle shitposters trying to use hack politicians to crawl into every last womb they can. Maybe Tulsa. https://t.co/R7iuCkr3U0

— David Simon (@AoDespair) September 21, 2021

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I don’t work for Apple, but for Time Warner, which no doubt has a variety of soulless corporate moments we could use to shout “squirrel” and avoid attending to the insane overreach in Texas. Or the fact that life, innocent or no, is not viable at far longer than six weeks. https://t.co/gKtKRNmURe

— David Simon (@AoDespair) September 21, 2021

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Me especially. When Baltimore says go fuck yourself, on the other hand, grab a tool and get at it, fucknuts. https://t.co/t4tDLwEvPQ

— David Simon (@AoDespair) September 21, 2021

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The Wire is written, structured and themed for sentient, coherent adult viewers that can, say, distinguish between a non-viable fetus and a living infant, and would not dare venture near the internet to opine on matters until they had mastered such basics. Try Mannix reruns. https://t.co/fqvwvuflcU

— David Simon (@AoDespair) September 21, 2021

Still, despite all the attention, no details were available on Simon’s Texas HBO project. The WarnerMedia-owned premium cabler did not return requests for comment on Simon’s proclamations when contacted by Deadline.

However, the project is in a very early phase, I heard.

Simon is currently working on the We Own This City limited series for HBO, with whom he has had a relationship going back to The Corner in 2000. Set in Simon’s beloved hometown, as The Wire was, the Jon Bernthal, Josh Charles and Jamie Hector-led six-parter spotlights the rise and fall of the Baltimore Police Department’s Gun Trace Task Force.

Simon and George Pelecanos write the series with The Wire scribes Ed Burns and Bill Zorzi. Simon, Pelecanos and Burns also EP with HBO’s former President of Miniseries Kary Antholis, Nina K. Noble and Green. Zorzi is co-executive producer. Dwight Watkins also serves as writer.