Sean Astin has joined Corey Stoll (House of Cards) and Mia Maestro (Alias) in the cast of The Strain, the upcoming FX pilot from showrunner Carlton Cuse (Lost) and director Guillermo del Toro.
Based on del Toro and Chuck Hogan’s book, The Strain follows the apocalyptic outbreak of a vampire virus in New York and the journey CDC doctor, Ephraim “Eph” Goodweather (Corey Stoll), the head of the Canary Team assigned to investigate the virus and lead the battle against the vampires.
Astin (Lord of the Rings) is set to play Jim Kent, a political operative for Canary Team and friend to Stoll’s Goodweather and Mia Maestro’s Nora.
Del Toro and Hogan have written the pilot with Del Toro set to direct. Even though we are far from the debut, this show will probably get the greenlight seeing how FX president John Landgraf said that the network has already picked up additional scripts for the show and has assembled a writing staff as the pilot prepares to go into production.
The Strain book description:
At New York’s JFK Airport, an arriving Boeing 777 taxiing along a runway suddenly stops dead. All the shades have been drawn, all communication channels have mysteriously gone quiet. Dr. Eph Goodweather, head of a CDC rapid-response team investigating biological threats, boards the darkened plane—–and what he finds makes his blood run cold.
A terrifying contagion has come to the unsuspecting city, an unstoppable plague that will spread like all-consuming wildfire—–lethal, merciless, hungry . . . vampiric. And in a pawnshop in Spanish Harlem, an aged Holocaust survivor knows that the war he has been dreading his entire life is finally here.
In one week, Manhattan will be gone. In one month, the country. In two months . . . the world.
Who here is looking forward to the show?
– Moonlight
I applaud Giuillermo del Tors for trying to bring back the vampire in an age when they are being ruined by Twilight. However, I heard about what Guillmermo’s vampires are like, and those aren’t vampires to me…they are more like aliens. So I couldn’t bring myself to read it.
I love this series of books and cannot wait for it to be brought to the screen. Its brilliant