Charlie Hunnam is set to make a return to series television. The former Sons of Anarchy star is set to play the lead in Prime Video’s highly anticipated Criminal, which is based on a series of graphic novels by Ed Brubaker. The series returns Hunnam to the world of organized crime, a genre that’s paid nice dividends for him in between Sons of Anarchy and The Gentlemen. According to Deadline, Hunnam is set to play the lead, “Leo, a brilliant master thief who sees all the angles, and specializes in plans with no guns and no violence. Like a chess player, Leo thinks three moves ahead. Other crooks think he’s a coward, especially compared to his father Tommy, who went to jail for murdering the most feared man in the city, Teeg Lawless.”
The cast will include Adria Arjona, who’s earning the best reviews of her career for her role opposite Glen Powell in Netflix’s Hit Man, the great Richard Jenkins, and former A Different World star Kadeem Hardison. The first four episodes of the series are set to be directed by filmmaking duo Ryan Fleck and Anna Borden, who just showed up at Sundance a few months ago with the flick Freaky Tales, which sounds very much in the mould of what Prime Video will be trying to pull off with this (speaking of which, where is Freaky Tales anyway?).
Charlie Hunnam previously starred in Apple TV’s short-lived adaptation of the classic novel Shantaram. He was also seen in Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon Part I: A Child of Fire. Overall, this sounds like it could be the perfect show for Prime, who’ve had a lot of luck in the area of action—driven adaptations, such as Reacher, The Boys, and the recent smash Fall Out. This might be their next hit, as Hunnam definitely has a following after seven gory seasons as Jax Teller in Sons of Anarchy.
Has anyone ready Brubaker’s Criminal? Let us know if this is good casting in the comments!