AceShowbiz -

While gearing up to premiere his new show "Luck" on HBO this December, David Milch extends his partnership with the network. The screenwriter/producer has signed an exclusive multi-year television deal to adapt selections from William Faulkner's writings into TV series and films.

The agreement encompasses 19 novels and 125 short stories by the late writer who won Nobel Prize in Literature in 1949. Under the deal, Milch will team up with Lee Caplin, the executor of the William Faulkner Literary Estate and chief executive of Picture Entertainment Corp., to choose which works to develop.

"We know that whatever David brings to the HBO table will be exciting and innovative," HBO programming president Michael Lombardo states about the new deal. The deal gives the network an exclusive first opportunity to finance, produce and distribute the projects.

Milch is also "delighted" to expand his longstanding relationship with HBO. "As we embark on this ambitious project, our first commitment is to serve the material, and we look forward to identifying and collaborating with the best screenwriters and filmmakers to help each of the pieces find its ideal form onscreen," he says.

Commenting on some people's opinions that Faulkner is an unfilmmable writer, the "NYPD Blue" creator tells Los Angeles Times, "I've never understood that. To me he seems enormously cinematic." He, however, claims that no decisions have been made on what Faulkner's works that will be developed first.