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.