Cinemax makes noise about Banshee

US premium cable network Cinemax has set a 2013 release date for its latest original production, a crime drama from the producers behind True Blood and House.

Banshee (10×60′) follows an ex-con and master thief who assumes the identity of the sheriff of Banshee, Pennsylvania, where he continues to commit crimes, despite being hunted by a group of gangsters he betrayed years earlier.

The series is exec produced by Alan Ball (True Blood), Greg Yaitanes (House), Peter Macdissi (Six Feet Under), Jonathan Tropper and David Schickler. Tropper and Schickler wrote the scripts.

Filming has now begun in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Banshee is the latest original drama coming to Cinemax, which also includes a new season of Strike Back, produced by the UK’s Left Bank Pictures; and spy thriller Hunted (fka Nemesis), from Shine Group-owned Kudos Film and Television.

Cinemax has also picked up a pilot called Hurt People, produced by GK-TV, which stars CSI star William Petersen as a veteran hitman forced to work for the crime family that killed his wife and hunt down his estranged daughter as she searches for her mother’s killers.