Dirk Gently has found his partner.
BBC America has just announced that Elijah Wood has been cast in the upcoming Dirk Gently. Elijah Wood will be playing Todd, a sort of “anti- Watson” to the protagonist detective Dirk.
Dirk Gently is based on the popular series of comedic detective novels. Dirk is a self- described ‘holistic detective’, meaning he’s able to find the interconnections between everything (and often uses this as an excuse to, say, take a trip to the Bahamas, all in the name of interconnection to the case of course). Really, Dirk is psychic, but refuses to acknowledge this and instead describes his uncanny ability as “a depressingly accurate knack for making wild assumptions.” A previous Dirk Gently show ran on BBC from 2010- 2012.
Don’t expect Todd to be Dirk’s put- upon lackey though. As he tells Dirk in the upcoming project’s script “I am not your Watson, asshole. I am not available for side-kicking on something I am not involved with. I am my own messed up person with my own messed up problems.” Instead, Todd’s struggle will be with his own demons and ethical quandaries as Dirk’s cavalier methods forces him to forge his own moral path. As the BBCA’s statement says, “Todd’s not a bad person. He’s not a good person yet, either, but he’ll get there.”
Elijah Wood of course famously portrayed hero hobbit Frodo in The Lord of the Rings trilogy (and some of The Hobbit trilogy, but we don’t talk about that). In addition to ending his bizarre, thoughtful turn on FX’s Wilfred, Wood has started his own horror production company SpectreVision (Cooties, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night).
Dirk Gently is created by screenwriter and notable tweeter (what would you call that? Social Media Prescence? Tweet Star?) Max Landis (Chronicle, American Ultra). Landis has been posting about his excitement about the project for awhile now, and the casting news today was no different.
Ted Adams (30 Days of Night) and David Alpert (The Walking Dead and Landis’ American Ultra) are among the executive producers. Dirk Gently is slated for eight one- hour episodes this fall, Entertainment Weekly reports. The titular detective has yet to be cast.