What do you do if you are Frank Darabont: your AMC series THE WALKING DEAD kicks you to the curb and all but removes you from the credits. Do you lie down and whine? No, you get back up and adapt another project and bring it to series. Oh, and you bring along some of your WALKING DEAD brethren who have since left the show.
L.A. NOIR is Darabont’s new project which just got a series order from TNT. The six episode first season will air in 2013. He grabbed WALKING DEAD stars Jon Bernthal (Shane) and Jeffrey DeMunn (Dale) to work on the series which sounds a lot like L.A. CONFIDENTIAL or GANGSTER SQUAD.
Plot: LA Noir stars Jon Bernthal as Joe Teague, an ex-Marine now working as an LAPD cop in an era rampant with police corruption. Jeffrey DeMunn plays Det. Hal Morrison, who heads up the LAPD’s new mob squad, with Jeremy Strong as Det. Mike Hendry, Morrison’s second in command. Neal McDonough is Capt. William Parker, Teague’s boss who is determined to weed out corruption and bring down Mickey Cohen. And Milo Ventimiglia plays Ned Stax, who fought alongside Teague during World War II but who now works as a lawyer with connections to the mob. The project also co-stars Ron Rifkin plays Los Angeles Mayor Fletcher Bowron, who makes it his mission to clean up corruption in city government; Pihla Viitala as Anya, the head bartender at Bunny’s on Central Avenue, the West Coast center of the African-American jazz scene; and Alexa Davalos as Jasmine, a beautiful woman whose past has come back to haunt her.
Cable has had a nice run of new series in recent years and Darabont is one of the best filmmakers working today. While I was sad to see him leave THE WALKING DEAD, I am glad to see L.A. NOIR getting a full order.
Anyone else looking forward to a trailer?
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