Netflix has found their their John Creasy. Yahya Abdul-Mateen ll is set to star in and produce the streamer’s new TV adaptation of Man on Fire. Deadline reports that Transformers: Rise of the Beasts helmer Steven Caple, Jr. will executive produce the series, and direct its first two episodes.

The series, which was ordered straight-to-series by Netflix earlier this year, will be based on the first two of A.J. Quinnell‘s Creasy novels, Man on Fire and The Perfect Kill. Mateen will play Creasy, a decorated Special Forces veteran beset with PTSD who tries to set himself on a path to redemption. When that redemption is taken from him, he has to use all his skills to fight back. Kyle Killen, who recently wrote Fear Street: Part One – 1994 for Netflix, will showrun, write, and executive produce the series; Caple and Mateen will also executive produce. It’s the latest project for the busy Mateen, who recently returned to menace Jason Momoa as Black Manta in Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, and who will star as Hollywood superhero Wonder Man in the Marvel TV series of the same name.

Quinnell‘s 1980 novel centers around Creasy, a burnt-out veteran of the French Foreign Legion who takes a job as a bodyguard for a wealthy couple in Italy. He bonds with the precocious young daughter of his employers, and goes on a rampage of revenge when the Mafia kidnap her. The book was first adapted for the screen in 1987, with Scott Glenn starring as Creasy in a little-seen European action film; more famously, Tony Scott filmed the novel in 2004, transplanting the action to contemporary Mexico City. With Denzel Washington as Creasy and a supporting cast that included Dakota Fanning, Christopher Walken, and Mickey Rourke, the film was a hit with audiences, grossing $130 million USD on a $70 million budget, and has become a perennial favorite on home video and TV.

Although Creasy appears to be not long for this world at the end of 2004’s Man on Fire, in Quinnell‘s novels, the character survives. The sequel, The Perfect Kill, sees Creasy’s wife and child killed in a terrorist bombing, only for Creasy to exact his brutal revenge on the perpetrators. Quinnell (the pen name of English writer Philip Nicholson) wrote five Creasy books in total before his 2005 death.

Netflix‘s new adaptation of Man on Fire has not yet set a release date.

via Collider