Writer and producer David Chase is returning to HBO with a new mini-series about men who swear relentlessly and resort to ruthless tactics to get ahead, only this time, it’s set in Hollywood. In a release, HBO said that Mr. Chase’s mini-series would be called “A Ribbon of Dreams” (taken from Orson Welles’s famous metaphor for film) and would follow two characters through the birth and development of the American motion picture industry.

Chase will write and executive produce the mini-series, as well as direct the initial episodes. Paramount Pictures' chairman and CEO, Brad Grey, who executive produced “The Sopranos” with Chase, will also serve as an executive producer. “It gives me pleasure to think of working, together with Brad, with HBO, again," Chase said. "These are all people who, obviously, occupy a special place in my heart.”

“A Ribbon of Dreams” kicks off in 1913, following a college-educated mechanical engineer and a cowboy with a violent past as they begin as employees of D.W. Griffith and then cross career paths with John Ford, John Wayne, Raoul Walsh, Bette Davis, Billy Wilder and other Hollywood pioneers.

HBO has released no details on the expected length of the mini-series, nor when it might be put into production. But in the past HBO has altered its schedule to move up projects that it deemed most ready and most worthy. Previous HBO mini-series have been as long as 12 hours (“From the Earth to the Moon” in 1998), while its most recent, “John Adams,” ran for seven hours.