TNT’s adaptation of the 2013 sci-fi film Snowpiercer will star Hamilton actor Daveed Diggs.
Snowpiercer, TNT’s upcoming television hourlong television pilot adaptation of the 2013 dystopic sci-fi film of the same name, now has its primary star set with Daveed Diggs, an actor whose acclaim continues to escalate, coming off his roles in the Broadway phenomenon Hamilton as Thomas Jefferson and Marquis de Lafayette, a run on sitcom Black-ish and Baz Lurhmann’s hip-hop throwback Netflix series The Get Down.
The Snowpiercer mythology depicts a world left in the aftermath of a catastrophic climate engineering experiment that left the Earth engulfed in an ice age, leaving the remnants of humanity to live on a massive experimental locomotive – the titular Snowpiercer – powered by its own perpetual motion, rounding a circumnavigational track.
With the TNT Snowpiercer pilot set seven years after the 2013 film, Daveed Diggs will play new primary character Layton Well, a prisoner living in the dregs of the train’s societal steerage in the back end. Described as a “quiet thinker” who spends his days tending to a cage filled with pet rats and sniffing a makeshift drug made from industrial waste called Chronole, Layton becomes an unlikely participant in an upheaval that could see caste clashes on the train.
2013’s Snowpiercer, directed by Bong Joon Ho, adapting the French comic book Le Transperceneige by Jacques Lob, Jean-Marc Rochette and Benjamin Legrand, seemed like an odd foreign film detour for Marvel Cinematic Universe Captain America Chris Evans. Yet, with a limited U.S. theatrical release, the South Korean film managed to achieve respectable box-office numbers with $86.8 million USD worldwide. ($4.5 million from the U.S. release.) Moreover, the film managed to achieve more critical acclaim in the States, thanks to its post-theatrical release by way of DVD/Blu-ray and VOD.
TNT's Snowpiercer pilot will see Doctor Strange helmer Scott Derrickson as director and executive producer, working off a script by showrunner/writer/executive producer Josh Friedman, whose television work you may have seen on NBC’s late pirate drama Crossbones plus other adapted series such as Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and halted adaptation of comic book series Locke & Key (to which Derrickson is still attached). However, Friedman also happens to be working on scripts for a few “small” film projects in James Cameron's Avatar sequels. Snowpiercer is a production of Tomorrow Studios via executive producers Mary Adelstein and Becky Clements and Turner’s Studio T.
With Snowpiercer’s uniquely stylized dystopic premise, coupled with its overt political themes of class division and a putrid pathos focused on the sinking depths of the human condition, there will certainly be much with which to work when it comes to a prospective ongoing television series.