Joseph Gordon-Levitt Is Playing TV’s Greatest Late Night Talk Show Host

Joseph Gordon-Levitt is currently being targeted for his next biopic, and that is comprised of portraying the greatest late-night host ever.

By James Brizuela | Published

joseph gordon-levitt

Hollywood has been comprised of reboots and remakes as well as giving popular celebrities the biopic treatment. These biopics give fans a deeper look into the personal lives of important figures through all their ups and downs, especially what allowed them to rise to the top of superstardom. One of the greatest talk show hosts to ever do it is now getting the biopic treatment. Johnny Carson will now be the subject of a deeper dive into his life and rise to fame. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is being targeted to play the late-night talk show in the series that is currently being shopped around.

The new series will be titled King of Late Night, and it promises to take a much deeper look into Carson’s life. David Milch, who is famous for creating Deadwood, is set to write the series. The series had been reported five years into development, even when Milch had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Jay Roach has also been attached to the project as the director, with Levitt serving as an executive producer. The series is said to follow Carson’s journey from LA to NY and then to Las Vegas. King of Late Night will take a deeper look at the late-night TV phenom as he traversed the difficulties of his on-air persona and his more personal attacks on celebrities and other figures. Also, how he was apparently meant to buy the Aladdin Hotel in Vegas but failed in doing so. Something that he claimed was never the case. All these details are sure to be explained more in the upcoming series.

Johnny Carson changed the way that late-night talk shows were portrayed, though his jokes and roasting other celebrities often came back to him in a much more negative way. Raymond Burr, who was the star of the show Perry Mason, got angered at Carson on two separate occasions for the constant fat jokes that were made at his expense by the late-night host. Joseph Gordon-Levitt does look similar to Carson, so it could be quite a perfect casting. Levitt has steadily been a part of many TV series as of late. His most recent is a show on Showtime called Super Pumped, where he portrays the creator of Uber, Travis Kalanick. Seems as if the man is wanting to be a part of the biopic game more now. He also famously portrayed Edward Snowden in Snowden.

King of Late Night is currently being shopped around currently and has not yet been picked up by a network, though with Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Jay Roach, and David Milch working together, it might not be a very long wait for a network to pick it up. Especially considering that Johnny Carson was one of the most beloved and controversial talk show hosts in history. Levitt’s more recent show, called Mr. Corman, was recently canceled by Apple+ TV. Though that cancelation sounds harsh, he is still a huge draw in Hollywood. He is set to be the voice of Jiminy Cricket in the Pinocchio live-action reboot. Adding the man to potentially play Carson might leave networks battling one another on who gets the rights to this new series.