Jeff Daniels to Star in Hulu’s 9/11 Drama The Looming Tower

Emmy Award-winning actor Jeff Daniels (The Newsroom, The Martian) has been cast as the lead in Hulu’s forthcoming 9/11 drama The Looming Tower.

The 10-episode hourlong series will focus on the time before the tragic events of 9/11. Based on Lawrence Wright’s Pulitzer Prize-winning expose The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda And The Road To 9/11, the story will follow the rivalry between the CIA and the FBI, and its deadly consequences.

Daniels will play John O’Neill, the troubled, “bull-headed” chief of New York’s FBI Counter-Terrorism unit. In the years before Sept. 11, O’Neill believes the U.S has been targeted by Al-Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden, but has a hard time convincing the CIA of the real threat of terrorism. Apparently, there was some bad blood going on between the CIA and the FBI. According to a press release, O’Neill is also “a lover of expensive food and drink, and is involved with at least two girlfriends, neither of whom know about his wife and children.” Sounds a bit like House of Cards meets a late-1990s version of Mad Men meets the true story of 9/11.

The series will be directed by Alex Gibney (Going Clear: Scientology and The Prison of Belief) and written by Dan Futterman (Capote, Foxcatcher). Wright will serve as an executive producer. There is no official release date yet, but they are aiming for a 2017 premiere.

(Disclosure: Paste Assistant Movies Editor Shannon Houston is a staff writer on The Looming Tower.)