Starz Orders Prostitute Drama Based on Steven Soderbergh's The Girlfriend Experience

Starz is hopping in bed with director Steven Soderbergh and a new high-end escort each week. The cable network has ordered The Girlfriend Experience, a 13-part anthology series based on Soderbergh's 2009 film of the same name.

In the film, real-life porn star Sasha Grey portrayed a call girl that offered "The Girlfriend Experience," a service that went beyond cash-for-sex and included a more intimate bonding experience much like what a couple has in a romantic relationship.

Video: Clive Owen gets bloody in the first trailer for Steven Soderbergh's The Knick

Soderbergh and Philip Fleishman will serve as executive producers of the series, with Lodge Kerrigan and Amy Seimentz writing and directing each episode of the series.

"We're in an exciting period of auteur-driven television right now," Soderbergh said in a statement. "When Philip floated the idea of a Girlfriend Experience-inspired television show, I thought: 'Let's make it a different woman in a different city, let's pair two independent writer/directors, one male and one female, and let them do the whole thing.'"

Worst ways to go: The most outrageous TV deaths

And lest you think the series will just be naked bed romps disguised as a television series, Fleishman says the series will take an intellectual approach.

"Many of these women are extremely accomplished," Fleishman said in a statement. "They range from musicians in major orchestras to PhD candidates in the sciences and often feel empowered by the control and economic freedom their work as GFE's affords them. The question is whether they define a new genus of contemporary relationship, or have relationships always been transactionally based in one form or another?"

Soderbergh has been dabbling in television after he announced his retirement from directing feature films. He directed HBO's Behind the Candelabra and has The Knick coming out on Cinemax this summer.

What do you think of Starz turning The Girlfriend Experience into a series?

Watch This Tonight — See why Whose Line Is It Anyway? is our editors' pick: