Showtime Greenlights Limited Series Starring Daniel Craig

LOS ANGELES: Showtime has ordered a new limited series, Purity, based on the Jonathan Franzen novel of the same name, with Daniel Craig signed to star.

Purity will be a 20-episode limited series set to air over the course of two years on Showtime. Production will start in 2017. Craig, who is best known to audiences for his role as James Bond in the blockbuster franchise, leads the cast.

Todd Field (In the Bedroom, Little Children) will write, direct and executive produce, along with executive producers Scott Rudin, Eli Bush, David Hare and Franzen. Hare and Franzen will also serve as writers on the series. Field will direct every episode.

Purity is billed as a story of “youthful idealism, extreme loyalty and cold-blooded murder.” Its characters range from STASI offspring to Oakland anarchists, inhabiting landscapes as varied as East Berlin, the Bolivian jungle, East Harlem walk-ups and the California Redwoods.

“Jonathan Franzen’s Purity is an epic American novel that pulses with the energy of a psychological thriller. I whipped through it in a week,” said David Nevins, the president and CEO of Showtime Networks. “His gripping and timely story has attracted a powerhouse team—Todd Field, Scott Rudin, Eli Bush, David Hare, along with Franzen himself, and the brilliant Daniel Craig who is perfectly cast as the charismatic, mysterious ‘Andreas Wolf.’ Put it all together and 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.”