Stoney Curtis Begins Development on Mainstream TV Series

LOS ANGELES—Veteran adult producer and director Stoney Curtis and his company Lethal Hardcore Productions have set up their first scripted television series for development. Curtis will be working with veteran studio executive and executive producer, Kirk Schenck, and his SixEleven Media on the mainstream project tentatively entitled Hardcore. The series is an anthology centered on the lives of four adult film producer-directors from different walks of life who have known each other for years. They compete, settle old grudges and live complicated lives below the surface of Hollywood’s glamorous facade. Hardcore is billed as "Breaking Bad in a Boogie Nights universe" with intersecting stories of old friends who all have dark secrets, unsettled scores, and unpaid debts that could endanger the businesses they’ve built and the people they love the most. The main character is based on Curtis’ life which included for many years living a dual life and hiding his involvement in the industry from family and friends. Development will take place out of SixEleven’s Los Angeles and Canadian offices with the goal to set up both North American and international financing. Schenck remarked, “Stoney is one of the last of the old breed of adult producers. He knows where the bodies are buried. He’s stayed clean in a dangerous business filled with money laundering, censorship and government crackdowns, crackpot talent “agents,” Mafia strong-arming, and even death threats from a Colombian cartel kingpin whose daughter ended up in one of his films. "Over Curtis’ career the industry has undergone massive changes, which have forced some desperate conduct in the dark shadows of L.A.’s glitter and sunshine. There are few better ways to tell the noir story of L.A. than through the prism of the adult film industry, and there’s no better source of the stories of that world than from Stoney.” Curtis, who has produced and directed more than 800 adult films spanning a 23-year career, said, “I’ve always wanted to tell the real story of my industry but from the inside out, from the viewpoint of the trenches, not the idealized sexy smokey versions typically found in Hollywood films. Hardcore will tell stories that actually happened, and are happening right now.” Curtis has seen generations of talent flow in and out of the adult business. Hardcore at its core is about a group of friends who came up the ranks in the business in the high-flying early 1990s when it was still a bit of a cottage-industry, when it was more about the “sex, drugs and rock and roll” than the corporatization of the current internet-based model. Back then, the girls wanted to become infamous, according to Curtis. "It was a time before the internet and social media when aspiring stars were going against the grain, rejecting the sexual rules of a more conservative society, everyone knew everyone and they all honored a set of rules as to how things were done," he said.