Garrett Hedlund may star in Cary Fukunaga's TNT event series The Alienist

Garrett Hedlund may star in Cary Fukunaga’s TNT event series The Alienist

March 16th 2016, 10:31am

According to The Wrap, Garrett Hedlund (PAN, TRON: LEGACY) is currently in talks to star in TNT's The Alienist, an event series based on the Caleb Carr novel of the same name.

As we learned last year, True Detective's Cary Fukunaga will helm every episode of the eight-part series, and he'll be directing from a script by DRIVE and SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN writer Hossein Amini. Fukunaga will also executive produce the project with FORREST GUMP scribe Eric Roth and Anonymous Content’s Steve Golin and Rosalie Swedlin.

Here's the book synopsis from Amazon:

The year is 1896, the place, New York City. On a cold March night New York Times reporter John Schuyler Moore is summoned to the East River by his friend and former Harvard classmate Dr. Laszlo Kreizler, a psychologist, or "alienist." On the unfinished Williamsburg Bridge, they view the horribly mutilated body of an adolescent boy, a prostitute from one of Manhattan's infamous brothels.

The newly appointed police commissioner, Theodore Roosevelt, in a highly unorthodox move, enlists the two men in the murder investigation, counting on the reserved Kreizler's intellect and Moore's knowledge of New York's vast criminal underworld. They are joined by Sara Howard, a brave and determined woman who works as a secretary in the police department. Laboring in secret (for alienists, and the emerging discipline of psychology, are viewed by the public with skepticism at best), the unlikely team embarks on what is a revolutionary effort in criminology– amassing a psychological profile of the man they're looking for based on the details of his crimes. Their dangerous quest takes them into the tortured past and twisted mind of a murderer who has killed before. and will kill again before the hunt is over.

Things seem to be shaping up nicely for The Alienist, so we will likely be hearing more about the planned series in the near future.

Hedlund can be seen next on the big screen starring alongside Kristen Stewart, Chris Tucker, Steve Martin, Vin Diesel and Tim Blake Nelson in Ang Lee's BILLY LYNN'S LONG HALFTIME WALK, which is due out on November 11, 2016.