Henry Winkler will team up with his son, Max Winkler, in a new HBO limited series about Texas mafia members titled King Rex. Henry Winkler is known for such roles as the Fonz in Happy Days and Gene Cousineau in Barry. Max Winkler has directed episodes of tv shows such as New Girl and Brooklyn Nine-Nine, as well as wrote and directed the indie dramedy Flower.
Now, Deadline reveals that both Winklers will be executive producing the new HBO series, King Rex, with Henry Winkler also starring and Max Winkler directing the pilot. The series is based on Lawrence Wright’s November 1980 Texas Monthly article titled "Rex Cauble and the Cowboy Mafia," and follows Cauble (Winkler) as he runs a cannabis smuggling operation. In the true-crime column, Cauble and his mafia cohorts are eventually chased down by the IRS and the FBI for the enormous amount of money they attempted to make through illegal avenues.
Mixing family and business always has the potential to go awry, especially with a reversed power dynamic of a son directing a father. Hopefully, the pair working together will enhance each other's creativity and collaborative nature, with Schitt's Creek being a past example of a father-son working dynamic that managed to produce a successful series. Beyond this, how Henry Winkler manages to transform his inherently endearing presence on screen into a cutthroat mafia boss will give viewers something to look forward to when King Rex premieres on HBO.
Sources: Deadline