Riley Keough to Star in and Produce HBO's Casino Drama 'Advantage Player'
HBO is developing a gambling-themed drama series built around Riley Keough, who will star in and executive produce the project alongside a team that includes the real-life gambler whose story inspired it.
The series, titled Advantage Player, comes from writer and showrunner Will Graham and Media Res, the production company run by Michael Ellenberg. Media Res serves as co-studio with HBO. The project landed at HBO in a competitive situation — meaning multiple outlets were vying for it, and HBO won the bidding.
Keough will play a brilliant misfit who discovers the secret to beating casinos and is pulled into a world of obsessive outlaws. The character draws from the real life of Gina Fiore, a professional gambler who chronicled her 24-year career in the memoir Advantage Player: Blackjack, Backrooms, and Beginnings. Fiore is credited as an executive producer on the series, alongside Keough and Gina Gammell through their Felix Culpa banner, Graham, Tonia Davis and Max Linsky for Invitation Media, and Media Res' Ellenberg and Christina Malach.
For Keough and Graham, the project reunites a creative pairing that last worked together on Prime Video's limited series Daisy Jones & the Six, where Keough played the title role and Graham executive produced and co-showran.
The connection to Fiore's story predates the series itself. Keough provided a blurb for Fiore's memoir praising the book, and Fiore is now directly involved in bringing her own experiences to the screen.
The executive producer roster is dense: Felix Culpa (Keough and Gammell), Invitation Media (Davis and Linsky), and Media Res (Ellenberg and Malach) all share credits, alongside Graham as writer-showrunner and Fiore as both subject and producer. That line-up bridges the creative side — Keough as star, Graham as writer — with the production infrastructure of Media Res, whose co-studio arrangement with HBO means both entities share in the series' production.
HBO has not yet set a premiere date, episode count, or further casting. The project is in development, which is the stage before a formal series order commits funding to production. Not every developed project reaches screens — some stall at this stage. But the package of an established star, a showrunner with a proven track record, and a real-life story with built-in drama gives Advantage Player a strong starting hand.
