Now that Daniel Craig appears to have passed the cursed spirit of James Bond It Follows-style along to Tom Hiddleston, the 48-year-old British actor is free to pursue roles that apparently do not suck all of the joy out of his life. Luckily for him, Showtime just picked up that TV series based on Jonathan Franzen’s 2015 novel Purity. Craig will star as Andreas Wolf, the charismatic head of a journalism-ish organization that’s kind of like WikiLeaks, in this adaptation of Franzen’s story of moral complexity and interweaving plotlines.
“Jonathan Franzen’s Purity is an epic American novel that pulses with the energy of a psychological thriller.” said Showtime CEO David Nevins says in a statement. “I whipped through it in a week … Purity promises to be the kind of taut, long-form, serialized storytelling that is the best of premium television, and is precisely what we at Showtime aspire to deliver.”
The cable network has ordered a full 20 episodes of the limited series right off the bat, though it’s expected that they will air over the course of two seasons. Todd Field (Little Children) will direct the entire 20-hour run from scripts put together by himself, Franzen, and British playwright David Hare (The Judas Kiss). All three writers will produce, along with Craig, Scott Rudin (The Social Network), and Eli Bush (The Newsroom).