FX Options Vietnam Limited Series from Director Michael Mann

FX knows what it's doing when it comes to limited series. From the American Horror Story and Fargo franchises to The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story, FX has established itself as one of the masters of the limited series format. And on Thursday, they acquired another one that seems like it's going to be a slam dunk.

Deadline reports that the cable network has optioned a limited series based on journalist Mark Bowden's new book Huế 1968, about a battle that marked a turning point in the Vietnam War. Heat director Michael Mann and Oscar-nominated producer Michael De Luca will produce, with Mann directing several episodes. The mini-series is planned to be between eight and ten episodes and hopes to begin shooting in Asia later this year.

Huế 1968, which came out last month, is a multi-perspective account of the brutal 24-day battle for the South Vietnamese city of Huế. The battle, which was part of the North Vietnamese Tet Offensive that proved the North Vietnamese were not on the verge of defeat like political and military leaders said, was a huge turning point for American public sentiment on the war and led to the U.S. starting negotiations to end the conflict. Bowden also wrote the book Black Hawk Down, which Ridley Scott made into an Oscar-winning movie in 2001.

When Mann and De Luca bought the rights to Bowden's book in April, Mann told Deadline that the book is "a masterpiece of intensely dramatic non-fiction. Bowden's achievement is in making 'them' into 'us.' We are them. There are no background people; people abstracted into statistics, body counts. There is the sense that everybody is somebody, as each is in the actuality of their own lives. The brilliance of Bowden's narrative, the achievement of interviewing hundreds of people on all sides and making their human stories his foundation, is why Huế 1968 rises to the emotional power and universality of For Whom The Bell Tolls and All Quiet On The Western Front."

This will be Mann's first foray into television since 2011's ill-fated Luck, which he executive-produced.