Terence Winter battled a nagging thought as he wrote the pilot for HBO’s series “Boardwalk Empire,” a sprawling period epic that re-creates Atlantic City of the 1920s.

“I kept thinking ‘This is pointless. How can we possibly afford a boardwalk, or an empire?’?” Winter recalls. “We can’t call it ‘Boardwalk Empire’ and not see a boardwalk.” [Variety]