I just bought Rome, both seasons, on DVD for Cyber Monday then this news comes out; It's a good couple of days.  By the way both seasons were on sale for $45 bucks in total... amazing!

Rome was one of my favorite shows on television for it's shear brilliance, scale and class A characters but it was cancelled mainly because it was way too expensive and HBO just simply couldn't do it anymore.  From what I understand each season alone cost somewhere around $100 million and for a TV season, even I'll admit, I don't blame HBO for ending the series because that's a tremendous amount of cash and it's incredibly difficult to make money back when on TV.  They'd actually have more of a chance in the theaters to make a profit but for now that's up in the air.

Bruno Heller, the creator of Rome says, "There is talk of doing a movie version.  It's moving along.  It's not there until it is there.  I would love to round that show off."  The Hollywood Reporter continues in this report saying that "HBO executives have since admitted that axing the show probably was a mistake," and that could be a sign of hope for the resurrection. 

It's extremely unfortunate that Rome got cancelled because Heller had some great stuff planned.  He tells THR, "I discovered halfway through writing the second season the show was going to end.  The second was going to end with the death of Brutus. Third and fourth season would be set in Egypt. Fifth was going to be the rise of the messiah in Palestine. But because we got the heads-up that the second season would be it, I telescoped the third and fourth season into the second one, which accounts for the blazing speed we go through history near the end.  There's certainly more than enough history to go around."  All of that breaks my heart... that sounded incredible but what about the fifth season plan.  Could the movie focus on the rise of Christ with Pullo and Vorenus in the middle of it?  But wait, Vorenus died, didn't he? 

"It was very deliberate that we saw him drifting away but didn't see him atop a funeral pyre," Heller says and a terrible wait has been lifted... I love this show.

Read more of this story at THR.

-Phil

Watch this season from Rome below and see how bad ass both Vorenus and Pullo are--great characters!