Giancarlo Esposito to Star in Remake of BBC Drama ‘The Driver’ at AMC
Giancarlo Esposito is staying at AMC. Esposito will star in a new drama titled The Driver, AMC Networks announced March 8.
Esposito will play a taxi driver “whose life is turned upside down when he agrees to chauffer a New Orleans-based Zimbabwean gangster notorious for exploiting undocumented immigrants at the U.S. southern ports,” a statement said. The Driver has gotten a six-episode order and will air on AMC+ and AMC in 2023. Each episode will be an hour long.
Esposito has been a familiar face on AMC throughout Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. Dan McDermott, president of entertainment and AMC Studios for AMC Networks, said the network is excited to build a series around the “singular talent” and “an unforgettable character who takes what he thinks is a straightforward job opportunity and finds himself confronted with a world that tests him in ways he could never have imagined.”
“I am over the moon excited, enthused, and inspired to be in collaboration with the stellar network and creative team of AMC,” Esposito said in a statement. “Thanks for believing in me. It’s great to be back home!”
The Driver is a remake of the BBC One three-part miniseries of the same name. It starred The Walking Dead alum David Morrissey.
Danny Brocklehurst and Jim Poyser created the original BBC One series. It was developed for AMC by Brocklehurst and Sunu Gonera. The Driver is produced by AMC Studios, in association with A+E Studios and Thruline Entertainment. Theo Travers (Billions) will serve as showrunner and the pilot will be directed by Gonera.
“It is a pleasure and a privilege to be working with AMC on this bold reimagining of my U.K. mini-series,” Brocklehurst said. “Sunu Gonera and Theo Travers have both brought superb original voices to the premise and I am thrilled to be going on this ride with them.”
The idea to develop the series for U.S. audiences came from Esposito’s love of the U.K. show.
“This whole journey started as a simple conversation four years ago in my manager Josh Kesselman’s living room when he said, ‘Giancarlo is keen to play an everyman as his next role. There’s a British show he loves called The Driver. Would you watch the pilot and see if you could come up with a take you both could get excited about?'” Gonera said. “Um, would I? You had me at Giancarlo and everyman.”
“I couldn’t be more excited to help bring this show to life,” Travers said. “I’ve been a fan of Giancarlo’s work since Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing. It’s a true honor to have the chance to collaborate with him in this way. The Driver is a high-voltage, dark identity quest for an everyman trying to find renewed purpose in his life. We’re rooting for Vince as he goes down this wild and nihilistic route to discover who he once was, and in many ways still is, because it gets him out of a stuck place. That’s where a lot of us feel we are right now, which makes this series so timely for today.”
Esposito, Gonera, Brocklehurst, and Travers will executive produce the series, as will Josh Kesselman and Danny Sherman from Thruline and Barry Jossen and Tana Jamieson from from A+E Studios.
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