Tradecraft: Brianna Brown Joins Homeland

Another actress has headed for Homeland. The Hollywood Reporter reports that former General Hospital regular Brianna Brown has joined the CIA drama from erstwhile 24 producers Howard Gordon and Alex Gansa in a potential recurring role. According to the trade, the 31-year-old actress, who has also graced a number of Judd Apatow productions including Knocked Up and The 40-Year-Old Virgin, will play Lynne Reed, a statuesque former Miss Ohio "who spent two years in the harem of Prince Farid Bin Abbud and who now works as his procurer, using her looks and smarts as commerce." Claire Danes stars as a CIA agent who suspects that a recently returned American POW (Damian Lewis) has been turned by Al Qaeda and plans to perpetrate an attack on US soil. Mandy Patankin plays her Agency superior. Homeland airs this fall on Showtime. You can watch a trailer here.

Tradecraft: Morena Baccarin Heads For Homeland

Deadline reports that Morena Baccarin (Firefly, V) has joined the cast of Showtime's Homeland, the new spy series from 24 producers Howard Gordon and Alex Gansa.  The Serenity actress will play Jessica Brody, the "strong, smart wife" of rescued POW Marine Sergeant Scott Brody (Damian Lewis). Driven CIA agent Carrie Anderson (Claire Danes) believes that Brody has been turned during his time in captivity, and now represents a Manchurian Candidate-like threat to homeland security.  Baccarin replaces Laura Fraser, who played that part in the pilot.  Many people (myself included) fully expected Joss Whedon to cast his Firefly star as S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Maria Hill in his movie of Marvel's superhero squad The Avengers (no relation to the TV show), but instead he opted for How I Met Your Mother's Cobie Smulders.  Now Baccarin ends up in a spy project anyway—even if she's not playing an agent.

Watch the exciting teaser for Homeland, which debuts this fall, here.

Homeland Trailer

Homeland (which has been in development since last fall) may be familiar territory for 24 producer Howard Gordon, but I have to hand it to him: while it does look to share the suspense of 24, it also manages to look like a completely different take on the subject of spies fighting terrorism on US soil.  As previously reported, Claire Danes plays a CIA agent convinced that a newly rescued American POW has been turned, Manchurian Candidate-style, and now poses a threat.  Mandy Patinkin is her Agency mentor.  And it looks good! Homeland debuts on Showtime this fall.  Check out the teaser:

Tradecraft: Homeland Goes To Series

The Hollywood Reporter reports that 24 showrunner Howard Gordon's new spy pilot Homeland, starring Claire Danes, has been picked up for a full twelve-episode season by Showtime.  In case you've missed all the previous Homeland coverage here, the trade handily describes the show as "a psychological thriller from Howard Gordon, Alex Gansa and Gideon Raff [telling] the story of a CIA officer (Danes) battling her own demons who becomes convinced that the intelligence that led to the rescue of a U.S. soldier (Lewis) was a setup." A short clip popped up online today featuring Danes and Mandy Patinkin (looking a lot like Steven Spielberg, for some reason), who plays her mentor.  I think it looks pretty cool.  It's very classic spy stuff, basically the Cold War question of identifying whether a defector is for real or not updated for the War on Terror era.

Howard Gordon Discusses His Many Spy Projects in New Interview

TV Squad has a good, in-depth interview with 24 producer Howard Gordon in which he touches on all of his many spy projects, past and future, including 24 (the show and the upcoming movie), Homeland (his new Showtime series debuting this fall), Gideon's War (his novel) and Legends (the NBC series based on the Robert Littell novel about a CIA agent so deep into his cover identities that he loses sight of his own). Personally, I'm most interested in that last one, but unfortunately it doesn't sound likely to move forward—at least not with Gordon.  "This may be the last that we ever talk about [Legends]," he tells the website, somewhat cryptically.  Does that mean that he thinks it's unlikely to be picked up, or that if it is, his busy schedule (possibly including the new NBC show R.E.M.) means that he won't be involved with it?  Hard to say, but he does reveal that we should know within the next week or so if it's going to series or not. If it does, it's possible that Littell fans might be a little surprised. "It's a very, very compelling story," Gordon says, "although I threw out a lot of the source material. So it's been re-imagined pretty significantly." Eh, that's to be expected when translating a novel (especially a relatively thin one—for Littell, anyway) into an ongoing television series.  He describes the tone as darkly humorous, "but it is the sort of gallows humor, or rather, the very dry spy humor." Very dry spy humor—I like it! 

As for the 24 movie, Gordon contradicts Kiefer Sutherland's recent statements that it might film as early as January.  "The 24 movie is on hold for now, although conversations are ongoing. Beyond that, there is no news—at least as far as I know. The challenge is just not making it a movie for the sake of making a movie version of 24, but really having a compelling story ... simply making it good, frankly." Well, I'm as disappointed as any spy fan over the delay, but I'm encouraged by the commitment to quality. 

Those are just a few highlights. Read the whole interview, including news on future novels and Gordon's reflective thoughts on the 24 series, here.

Tradecraft: Fuqua to Direct Ethan Hawke Spy Pilot

Deadline reports that Fox has put in a pilot order for the previously announced Ethan Hawke Mission: Impossible meets 24 spy series, Exit Strategy, and tapped Antoine Fuqua (Shooter) to direct.  Fuqua directed Hawke to an Oscar nomination in Training Day.  As reported last fall, Exit Strategy comes from producers Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, who toil frequently in the espionage genre (Alias, Mission: Impossible III, Jack of All Trades, the new Hawaii Five-O) and writer David Guggenheim (the upcoming Denzel Washington spy thriller Safe House). Like Mission: Impossible (the series), Exit Strategy follows a team of highly-skilled specialists (with Hawke playing the Peter Graves role of team leader) who are sent in when a CIA mission goes bad and agents need extracting.  Like 24, the action unfolds in real time. Unlike 24, each episode unfolds in a single hour in a single far-flung locale, rather than making up a season-long sleepless day in one city. I love Mission: Impossible and I tend to like its imitators, so I'm looking forward to this one.

As far as I know, Fuqua is also still attached to Consent to Kill, a long-in-development feature envisioned as the first in a series based on Vince Flynn's Mitch Rapp spy novels.

Tradecraft: Alex Rider Bad Guy Lands Male Lead In Homeland

Damian Lewis, who played Yassen Gregorovich, the assassin who slays Alex Rider's uncle, Ian Rider (Ewan McGregor) in the movie Operation: Stormbreaker (review here), has been cast as the male lead in Showtime's upcoming spy series from the executive producers of 24, Homeland.  Deadline reports that 24's Howard Gordon and Alex Gansa have cast Lewis (probably better known to the world at large for Band of Brothers) as Scott Brody, a Marine sergeant who returns home to his wife (Laura Fraser) and two children amidst much fanfare after spending eight years as a prisoner of war and comes under suspicion from CIA officer Carrie Anderson (previously announced Claire Danes), who believes he might be planning an attack on America, Manchurian Candidate-style. Besides Danes, Mandy Patinkin has already been cast as "politically savvy CIA CIA Division Chief emeritus Saul Berenson," and the trade blog reports that British actor David Harewood (Robin Hood, The Fixer) will join him as David Estes, "the youngest Deputy Director of Intelligence in CIA history, decisive, political, professional, but ultimately self-serving who is frequently exasperated by Carrie's obsessive determination to follow up any lead, no matter how small or politically inconvenient." Yep, that definitely sounds like it's from the former 24 producers!  (Even if it's actually based on an Israeli series.) Lewis was cast in Operation: Stormbreaker when it was envisioned as the first in a film franchise reflecting the mega-popularity of Anthony Horowitz's teen spy novels. Had the first film not bombed (thanks to a non-release from The Weinstein Company in America), Lewis would have played a much larger role in subsequent installments. He and star Alex Pettyfer (who played Rider) seem to have landed on their feet, however, with Deadline recently touting Pettyfer as potentially the next Robert Pattinson, thanks to his forthcoming roles in teen-friendly movies like Beastly and I Am Number 4.

New Spy DVDs Out This Week

Wow!  On the second-to-last Tuesday before Christmas, it's a huge day for spy releases.  Let's get right into it.

I found 24: Season 8 to be a real return to form for the gritty real-time spy series–and a fitting swan song.  Today, Fox releases the complete final season on DVD and Blu-ray.  Extras include the show's usual assortment of deleted scenes and featurettes.  Retail is $59.98 for the 6-disc DVD set and $69.99 for the 4-disc Blu-ray set, though of course both are available for much less at various online retailers.   

Also out from Fox today is 24: The Complete Series.  This mammoth 56-disc set (eight days' worth of real-time watching!) includes every episode from all eight seasons, plus the feature-length TV movie 24: Redemption (review here) that bridged the lengthy gap between the show's sixth and seventh seasons.  On top of including all the copious extras that were originally released with each season (commentaries, featurettes, deleted scenes and more), 24: The Complete Series will also boast an exclusive bonus disc with all new extras.  According to TVShowsOnDVD, that disc includes the featurettes "Chloe's Arrest" and "Comic-Con 2009 Panel," a "Season 8 Wrap Party Reel," and a 4-segment doumentary called "Eight Days.". (The segments are called "Jack Bauer: Evolution of a Hero," "Presidents Friends and Villains," "Memories and Moments" and "Goodbye.") 24: The Complete Series retails for $349.98, but right now Amazon's got it for way less than half that: just $139.99!  If you're determined to have this set, I'd jump on that deal quickly, because it might even just be for the day.

Ever wonder what a Jean-Pierre Jeunet-directed Mission: Impossible would be like?  Wonder no more.  The amazing French director answers that question in his newest movie, known here in America simply as Micmacs and available today from Sony Classics on both DVD and Blu-ray. Micmacs is not a spy movie, but it really is a very whimsical episode of Mission: Impossible, about a strange team of "specialists" (a contortionist, a human cannonball, an inventor, etcetera–all people Jim Phelps might very well have pulled out of his folder in the early days of Mission!) who pull a series of intricate, Rube Goldberg-inspired heists and cons on two rival arms dealers.  It's all very much in Jeunet's trademark style, and while it's not on the level of Delicatessen or A Very Long Engagement (one of my very favorite movies of all time), it is a whole lot of fun and likely to entertain fans of the Mission: Impossible TV show. Extras include a commentary by Jeunet, a conversation with the director and actress Julie Ferrier, a Making-Of featurette and more. Retail is $38.96 (how do they pick these numbers?) for the Blu-ray and $28.95 for the DVD, but obviously you can find it cheaper.

Yes, Joe Carnahan's feature version of the Eighties action staple The A-Team is a spy movie, with Watchmen's Patrick Wilson and an un-billed Jon Hamm as CIA agents–and it, too, is available today from Fox on DVD and Blu-ray. Liam Neeson steps into George Peppard's shoes as the leader of an elite special forces squad who gets set up by Blackwater-like mercenaries and goes rogue to prove their innocence.  This movie has loads of problems (like two long beginnings–one utterly superfluous–before it really starts up), but it's also pretty fun.  I particularly liked Jessica Biel in it, and she's never really impressed me before. But there's a scene midway through where our guys are plunging out of the sky in a tank with a parachute, and start shooting at the ground to direct their trajectory.  Someone on Biel's military detail asks if they're trying to hit anything, and Biel, as the only female in the movie with a substantial part, rolls her eyes with her best "stupid boys!" look and says, "No, they're trying to fly the tank."  She's not surprised, and she delivers the line as the sole voice of reason in the film.  I really loved the tone that scene set.  Both the DVD and Blu-ray feature two versions of the film (theatrical and extended) and a director commentary, but most of the extras seem to be BD exclusives, including deleted scenes, a gag reel, a documentary called "The Devil's in the Details: Inside the Action with Joe Carnahan" and the featurettes "Plan of Attack," "Character Chronicles" and "Visual Effects Before and After."  Retail is $29.98 for the DVD and $39.99 for the Blu-ray; you know the drill.

Finally, we have Hawaii Five-O: The 10th Season from CBS/Paramount, which features two Bond Girls among its guest star line-up–Maud Adams and Luciana Paluzzi–and a return to espionage and international terrorism-themed plots.  McGarrett's nemesis, Chinese master spy Wo Fat (Khigh Deigh), sits this season out... but wasn't it cool to see him turn up (in the person of Mark Dascascos) on last night's episode of the new Hawaii Five-O?  Blasts from the past aside, the original series is way better than the current incarnation, so check it out if you only know the new hit.  Jack Lord, the first Felix Leiter, is and always will be the real Steve McGarrett.

Tradecraft: Ethan Hawke Commits To Spying

Hot on the heels of his spy movie Numbers Station, Ethan Hawke has apparently committed full-time to a spy career. Deadline reports that the actor is in talks to star in (and produce) Exit Strategy, the Kurtzman and Orci Fox drama we first heard about in September. The trade blog offers some more details on the series in their Hawke story: "Exit Strategy centers on a team of five experts associated with the CIA who are deployed when a CIA operation goes bad to extract the ones involved before it's too late. Hawke would play the team leader, the architect of [the] exit strategy." Okay, so it's Mission: Impossible with Hawke in the Peter Graves role.  But wait!  There's more!  "Like 24, the action in Exit Strategy would also unfold in real-time."  Aha!  So it's Mission: Impossible meets 24!  I like it.  I'm on board.  I frequently lament the fact that CBS hasn't thought to resurrect Mission: Impossible as a TV show while they're busy remaking Hawaii Five-O and The Wild Wild West, but until they figure that out, I'm happy to accept the imitators, like Leverage and now Exit Strategy.  By the end of 24, I thought the real time gimmick was really hampering the series, but apparently Exit Strategy will be a little different.  Rather than an ongoing twenty-four-hour "day," Deadline reports that "each episode [of Exit Strategy] would tackle a different crisis in a different country." That might work better. 

Deadline points out that Hawke's only previous network television gig was the episode of Alias he guest starred on, another spy series for which Kurtzman and Orci wrote.  Safe House's David Guggenheim is penning the Exit Strategy pilot.

Tradecraft: Mandy Patinkin Joins 24 Producers' New Spy Series

Deadline reports that Mandy Patinkin (The Princess Bride) has joined the cast of Homeland, the new Showtime spy series from 24 producers Howard Gordon and Alex Gansa.  As previously reported, Claire Danes has already been cast as CIA agent Carrie Anderson.  The trade blog reports that "Patinkin will play the smart and politically savvy CIA Division Chief emeritus Saul Berenson who is Carrie's main champion in the intelligence upper echelon and her sounding board."  Sounds like a character who could have just as easily popped up on 24!  (Also sounds a bit like the character 24 alum Gregory Itzen plays on Covert Affairs.)  Patinkin's last regular TV gig was on Criminal Minds.  Production on Homeland begins early next year.

Tradecraft: Rick Schroder Meets Jane

Deadline reports that Rick Schroder (Mike Doyle on Season 6 of 24, NYPD Blue) has joined the cast of the Lifetime spy pilot Meet Jane.  He'll play the computer technician husband whose wife, Jane (previously announced Molly Parker) is recruited by the FBI to spy on him.  Schroder's character is suspected of selling secrets to Russia, and her new spy job empowers the timit housewife trapped in an unhappy marriage.  I'm getting really excited about this Breach meets Scarecrow and Mrs. King project!  Especially after seeing Molly Parker on Human Target a few weeks ago.  I'd never seen her in anything before, and watching the episode I was really impressed by the guest star playing Chance's client–the unknowing widow of a man he killed years earlier.  I looked her up only to discover it was the same actress cast in Meet Jane.  She definitely demonstrated the chops to lead a spy show.  I hope this goes to series!

Tradecraft: Is Claire Danes The Next Jack Bauer?

Who can possibly follow in Kiefer Sutherland's tough-as-nails, torture-happy shoes as America's next top secret agent?  According to Deadline, former 24 showrunner Howard Gordan thinks My So-Called Life waif Claire Danes has got what it takes.  He's picked her to play the lead counter-terrorism agent in his previously announced new Showtime drama pilot, Homeland.  The trade blog reports that Danes is "in talks" to play Carrie Anderson, "a smart, driven and iconoclastic CIA case officer who tracks down threats to homeland security coming from the Middle East."  Just like Jack Bauer!  Homeland is a remake of an Israeli series, Prisoners of War.

Tradecraft: 24 Veteran Developing Pinkerton Series

Deadline reports that 24 co-creator Bob Cochran is concocting an 8-10 episode limited series for STARZ about Allan Pinkerton.  Pinkerton, of course, is famous for starting America's first and biggest detective agency, which would go on to employ Dashiell Hammett, who would base his Continental Op character on Pinkerton men he worked with.  So what does that have to do with spies?  Well, apparently, Pinkerton was also Abraham Lincoln's spymaster, heading up the Union Intelligence Service (precursor to the Secret Service) during the American Civil War.  (I never knew that!)  Those years will feature prominently in the STARZ series, including a true occasion on which he saved Lincoln from an early assassination attempt.  (Unfortunately he was no longer in charge of the President's security years later when John Wilkes Booth succeeded where the former assassin had failed.)  Furthermore, Pinkerton was also involved in the Underground Railroad.  Sounds like fascinating stuff!  This could be a great miniseries (or series; the trade blog reports that Cochran is leaving the door open for a second series), potentially combining the mystery/detective genre with spies and Westerns and even historical dramas.  Gerard Butler, who, like Pinkerton, is Scottish, is also involved as a producer–but only as a producer at this time.  However, I find it hard to believe he's not at least considering starring as well... 

Tradecraft: 24 Producer's Latest Spy Show Lands At Showtime

Howard Gordon's Homeland has found a home of its own on cable, reports Variety.  According to the trade, the Manchurian Candidate-esque project, which is based on an Israeli show called Prisoners of War, "revolves around the aftermath of the release of a U.S. soldier after a long period of captivity as a prisoner of war.  He's been presumed dead, which heightens the surprise when he is set free.  But after he returns home, a female CIA agent becomes convinced that he has become a rogue agent now focused on aiding the enemy."  The CIA agent becomes obsessed with preventing the next 9/11, which is familiar territory for writer/producers Gordon and Alex Gansa, both veterans of 24.  Gordon sees cable as the ideal home for his series, saying that the 10-12 episode season format works perfectly for its serial plotline.  The trade also adds that former Jack Ryan Ben Affleck (a hot commodity after his number one opener The Town) is rumored to be in talks to direct the pilot.