Actors Sylvester Stallone and Cole Hauser have joined forces to adapt a book about North Texas-born gambling kingpin Lester “Benny” Binion into a television series.
Deadline first reported the news.
Written in 2014 by former Dallas Morning News reporter Doug J. Swanson, Blood Aces: The Wild Ride of Benny Binion, the Texas Gangster Who Created Vegas Poker chronicles the life of Binion, who presided over an illicit Dallas gambling racket in the 1930s.
Binion gained notoriety as an outlaw with ties to alleged bombings and shootings targeting rivals in the city. “Enough people wanted him dead that in 1946, he moved his family to Las Vegas,” The News wrote in 2002. Plus, gambling was legal in Nevada, where Binion opened the famous Horseshoe casino and founded the World Series of Poker. He died at 85 in 1989.
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Stallone is set to executive produce the TV series, titled Blood Aces.
He described Binion to Deadline as “a New West icon who was a conduit connecting many worlds, some glamorous, some dangerous, some shady, but all intriguing.” Stallone continued, “This is a story that will captivate audiences, and it’s a role made for Cole Hauser to play.”
Benny Binion, who shifted his operations from Dallas to Nevada in 1949, poses for a picture on the steps of the federal court in Waco in 1953. He was sentenced to a five-year term that year for tax evasion.
Associated Press
Hauser will star as Binion and produce alongside Stallone. “Benny Binion is one of the great Western American characters and success stories of the 20th century, loaded with ambition, vision, balls, and like all controversial characters, many flaws,” Hauser told Deadline in a statement. “His legacy is undeniable.”
The collaborators have both had leading roles in shows from Fort Worth-raised TV creator Taylor Sheridan. Hauser is known for playing ranch hand Rip Wheeler in Yellowstone and is set to reprise the part in the upcoming spin-off Dutton Ranch, which has filmed in North Texas. Stallone plays mobster Dwight Manfredi in crime drama Tulsa King.
It’s unclear when Blood Aces will go into production or where it could film.
Swanson, who worked for decades as an investigative reporter at The News, told The New York Times in 2014 about Binion’s origin story, calling him a product of his time.
“As a racketeer in Depression-era Dallas he swam in the same sea of violence and desperation as everyone else,” Swanson said. “He wasn’t consumed by bloodlust — far from it. He was a canny, shrewd and pragmatic businessman, though he could barely read or write. He either controlled his rivals or had them killed.”
Swanson will be involved in the project as a co-executive producer, essentially a consultant on factual matters, he told The News over email. “Binion is a great character in a terrific setting, so there’s wonderful potential for a TV series. And I’m quite pleased that folks like Sylvester Stallone and Cole Hauser, who have done such outstanding work in the past, are committed to this project.”
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