After his successful outing with Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, it has been widely expected that Quentin Tarantino’s next venture to our screens would be his presumed final feature film. However, Deadline reports that the acclaimed director is in early talks to direct a few episodes of the Timothy Olyphant-led vehicle, Justified: City Primeval.
Justified: City Primeval is an upcoming limited series and a sequel to the award-winning Justified, which ran from 2010 to 2015. Justified saw Olyphant in the lead role of U.S Marshal Raylan Givens, which he will be reprising in the sequel. The 2010 TV show was based on a short story Fire In The Hole from iconic author, Elmore Leonard. As such, Tarantino’s potential involvement is not surprising as the director has previously adapted Leonard’s Rum Punch into his 1997 film, Jackie Brown. The director has also optioned other Leonard works and has discussed directing Forty Lashes Less One, a notable western from the author.
Should Tarantino seal the deal to direct the upcoming TV show, this will mark to his directorial return to TV since 2005’s CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, where he directed Episodes 24 and 25 of Season 5. This will also reunite him with Olyphant who appeared in his latest outing, Once Upon A Time In Hollywood.
Olyphant’s character, Raylan Givens, appeared in several works in Leonard’s bibliography including the aforementioned Fire in The Hole, as well as, Pronto, Riding The Rap, and Raylan which was published in 2012 after Justified’s success. In an interesting move, however, Justified: City Primeval will be based on City Primeval: High Noon in Detroit, a novel that does not include the Givens character. Instead, this adaptation will have Olyphant’s Givens replace the book’s original protagonist, Detective Raymond Cruz.
Olyphant will also serve as executive producer alongside showrunners – Dave Andron and Michael Dinner, as well as Graham Yost, who created the original series. Peter Leonard, Sarah Timberman, Chris Provenzano and Carl Beverly, will also serve as executive producers on Justified: City Primeval.
FX, where Justified: City Primeval will be airing, has released the official synopsis, giving fans an idea of what to expect from the show:
Having left the hollers of Kentucky eight years ago, Raylan Givens now lives in Miami, a walking anachronism balancing his life as a U.S. Marshal and part-time father of a 14-year-old girl. His hair is grayer, his hat is dirtier, and the road in front of him is suddenly a lot shorter than the road behind.
A chance encounter on a desolate Florida highway sends him to Detroit. There he crosses paths with Clement Mansell, aka The Oklahoma Wildman, a violent, sociopathic desperado who’s already slipped through the fingers of Detroit’s finest once and aims to do so again. Mansell’s lawyer, formidable Motor City native Carolyn Wilder, has every intention of representing her client, even as she finds herself caught in between cop and criminal, with her own game afoot as well. These three characters set out on a collision course in classic Elmore Leonard fashion, to see who makes it out of the City Primeval alive.
via Collider