Secret agent Remo Williams is headed to the small screen. Sony Pictures has inked a deal to adapt the long-running Destroyer series of action-adventure pulp novels. Deadline reports that Gordon Smith, executive producer of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, will head up the project.

In the Destroyer novels, Remo Williams is a New Jersey cop whose death is faked so he can become a super-agent for the secret governmental organization CURE. Trained in martial arts to a degree that it gives him seemingly-superhuman abilities, he’s given the code-name Destroyer and travels the world battling crime, terrorism, and evil. The first Destroyer novel, Created, The Destroyer, was published in 1971, and co-written by Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir; Murphy and Sapir are both deceased, but the series continues to this day under other writers. Over 150 Destroyer novels have since been published, selling over 50 million copies and being translated into 40 different languages.

This won’t be the first attempt to adapt Williams for the screen. In 1985, veteran James Bond director Guy Hamilton directed the big-budget action movie Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins for Orion Pictures. Starring the late Fred Ward as Remo Williams, the movie co-starred Kate Mulgrew, Wilford Brimley, and, inexplicably, the very not-Korean Joel Grey under some highly-offensive makeup as Williams‘ Korean martial arts instructor Chiun. Orion had great expectations for the film, seeing the character as a blue-collar James Bond, and signed Ward to a three-movie deal, but despite Ward‘s charisma and a standout action scene that made use of the then-under-renovation Statue of Liberty, the movie was unsuccessful with critics and audiences. However, it was nominated for an Oscar for Best Makeup, and Grey received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

A pilot for a TV series was produced three years later, in 1988, with Jeffrey Meek as Williams and, once again, a white actor (this time Roddy McDowall) as Chiun; it did not lead to a series, but was aired on ABC as Remo Williams: The Prophecy. Hollywood has maintained an interest in the property; back in 2014, Shane Black was attached to direct a new Destroyer movie, from a script by Jim Uhls, but that project never reached fruition.

In addition to Smith, the series will also be executive produced by Adrian Askarieh, of Prime Universe Films, who also produced the Hitman video game adaptations.

Stay tuned to Collider for future updates.

via Collider