The pilot for a TNT television series based on director Bong Joon-ho's 2013 sci-fi film SNOWPIERCER will soon be heading into production, and the network has made two very important hiring decisions: they've secured a director for the pilot and found their lead actor.
SINISTER / DOCTOR STRANGE director Scott Derrickson will be taking the helm of the pilot and will be serving as an executive producer on the series alongside Bong Joon-ho, Park Chan-wook, Lee Tae-hun, Dooho Choi, Becky Clements, Marty Adelstein of Tomorrow Studios, and writer / showrunner Josh Friedman.
Snowpiercer is
set seven years after an apocalyptic ice age leaves Earth as a frozen wasteland and will focus on the survivors who inhabit a gigantic, perpetually moving train that circles the globe.
Daveed Diggs, who won a Tony for his performance in the stage musical Hamilton, will be starring as Layton Well. The description of the character says that he is
a prisoner barely surviving the harsh conditions in the tail end of the train. A quiet thinker who spends his days sniffing the industrial-waste-turned-drug Chronole and tending to his cage full of rats, Layton becomes a reluctant participant in a struggle that could upend life on the train.
The film this series is based on said the ice age began in 2014, and most of the story plays out in 2031. If the TV show shares the same continuity, the "seven years after" setting would place its events ten years before the film. But there's no indication that the series and the movie are meant to be connected, Friedman could just be taking the concept and doing his own thing with it.
We'll keep you updated on Snowpiercer as more details are revealed.