A famed director with a history of adapting Elmore Leonard’s (Fire in the Hole) works is in talks to return to another project based on the author’s material. Deadline reports Quentin Tarantino is discussing directing episodes of FX’s Justified revival. The limited series will have Timothy Olyphant (The Book of Boba Fett, The Crazies) return to his role as U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens.
Subtitled City Primeval the upcoming revival is based on Leonard’s 1980 book, City Primeval: High Noon in Detroit. Set eight years after the events of Justified’s series finale, Olyphant’s Givens is a single father residing in Miami. After a rare encounter, the bucket hat-wearing officer finds himself in search of an elusive serial killer, The Oklahoma Wildman, who has resurfaced in Detroit.
According to Deadline, Tarantino is quite familiar with Leonard’s work in different capacities. The auteurs 1997 film, Jackie Brown, was an adaptation of Leonard’s Rum Punch. And Tarantino’s affinity for spaghetti Westerns found him considering to direct Leonard’s Forty Lashes Less One as a film. He and Olyphant recently worked together for his Oscar-nominated Once Upon a Time…In Hollywood.
The limited series has the original series creator, Graham Yost, attached as an executive producer, via Deadline. He joins Olyphant, writer Dave Andron (Snowfall, Knight Rider), and lead director Michael Dinner (Mayans M.C., Electric Dreams). Additional executive producers include Carl Beverly (Unbelievable, SEAL Team), Peter Leonard, Taylor Elmore (Raines, 4400), Chris Provenzano (Guilty Party, Silicon Valley), Sarah Timberman (The Hitchhiker, The Odd Couple), Ingrid Escada (APB, Sneaky Pete), Eisa Davis (The Architect, Welcome to the Rileys), and VJ Boyd (SWAT, Lincoln Rhyme: Hunt for the Bone Collector). Novelist and TV writer Walter Mosley (Blood Grove, White Butterfly) will serve as a consulting producer.
Tarantino can be heard next narrating the first season of Showtime’s workplace anthology series, Super Pumped. Chronicling the rise and tumultuous reign of rideshare company, Uber, the season stars Joseph Gordon Levitt (40 Days of Summer, The Dark Knight) and Tarantino’s Kill Bill actress, Uma Thurman (Suspicion).