By Ben Travis, Al Horner | Posted 27 Dec 2019

In the current content boom, plenty of beloved TV series are delivering feature-length spin-offs – like The Sopranos prequel movie The Many Saints Of Newark, Deadwood’s self-titled follow-up film, and the upcoming big-screen adventures of Rick Grimes after his departure from The Walking Dead. And now, according to one of its main stars, The Wire could also at one point have received a film prequel.

Speaking to Empire, Dominic West, who played Detective McNulty across the beloved HBO crime series, opened up about the abandoned plans. “We were talking about maybe [making] a movie of The Wire for a while,” he said. “[Series creator David Simon] said it would have to be a prequel, but we were all looking a little long in the tooth.” Instead, Simon looked for a while to make another project that would reunite the stars of The Wire, about the younger years of Louis Armstrong. West described it as “a crime story set in New Orleans that was not a Wire film, but would feature the entire Wire cast.”

Sadly, it sounds like all of that fell through – but it’s not like we’re all starved for quality TV (and their movie) spin-offs right now. Read more from Dominic West in the new issue of Empire, on sale now – featuring a world exclusive cover story on the return of Daniel Craig’s James Bond in No Time To Die, with globetrotting on-set access, never-before-seen images, and brand new interviews with Daniel Craig, director Cary Joji Fukunaga, Bond boss Barbara Broccoli, and series newcomers Lashana Lynch and Rami Malek. Pick up a copy on newsstands now.