Back in February, it was announced that Simu Liu of Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings was set to star in an untitled espionage techno-thriller series for the Peacock streaming service and producer James Wan, with Jennifer Yale, who has worked as a writer and executive producer on the Apple+ series See and Netflix’s Chambers, coming on board the project to serve as co-showrunner alongside creator/writer/executive producer Thomas Brandon, who was a writer on Legacies. Now, five more actors have signed on to star in the series alongside Liu. They are Melissa Barrera of the two most recent Scream films, Sinclair Daniel (Insidious: The Red Door), Brian d’Arcy James (13 Reasons Why), Mark O’Brien (Ready or Not), and Kathleen Chalfant (The Affair). The only information Variety was able to dig up about their characters is their names: these actors will be playing Michelle, Parker, John Moira, Cobb, and St. George, respectively.
Said to be set “five minutes in the future”, the series begins with first-generation American intelligence analyst Alexander Hale (Liu) realizing his brain has been hacked, giving the perpetrators access to everything he sees and hears. Caught between his shadowy agency and the unknown hackers, he must maintain a performance 24/7 to flush out who’s responsible and prove where his allegiance lies.
Peacock has given the espionage techno-thriller a straight-to-series order, so it can skip over the usual pilot process. Liu is executive producing the show alongside Brandon, while Wan is executive producing with Michael Clear and Rob Hackett for his company Atomic Monster. Danielle Bozzone is overseeing the project for Atomic Monster. The show is coming our way from UCP, which is a division of Universal Studio Group.
Three years have gone by since Simu Liu made his Marvel Cinematic Universe debut as Shang-Chi, and while we’re still waiting to hear when exactly we’re going to see his character again, it’s good to see Liu keeping busy outside of the MCU.
Does this untitled espionage techno-thriller series sound interesting to you? What do you think of Melissa Barrera, Sinclair Daniel, Brian d’Arcy James, Mark O’Brien, and Kathleen Chalfant joining Simu Liu in the cast? Let us know by leaving a comment below.