A couple of years back we found out that a TV series based on Snowpiercer, the English-language debut of OKJA director Bong Joon Ho, might be on the way.

TNT has since ordered a pilot episode for the potential show, and the cast is beginning to take shape. The first actor cast was Daveed Diggs (Hamilton, Black-ish), and now Academy Award winner Jennifer Connelly has come aboard for one of her rare TV roles.

Like the movie, the planned Snowpiercer show is set after the world as we know it has come to an end, turned into a frozen wasteland. It’s set on a massive, constantly moving train filled with what’s left of humanity. The train’s many passengers are separated by classes, with the wealthy and important living in the first class sections and the lower class living in the worst sections. The show aims to explore “class warfare, social injustice and the politics of survival.”

Connelly is set to play a character named Melanie Cavill. The character is one of the train’s first-class residents and is known as the Voice of the Train, making the daily announcements on the public address system. Most first-class passengers look down on the lower class passengers, but Cavill is described as being “curiously fascinated by them.”

Diggs will play a character named Layton Well, a character described as “a prisoner who becomes a reluctant participant in a struggle that could upend life on the train.”

Josh Friedman (Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Emerald City) is the writer and showrunner on Snowpiercer. The pilot episode is set to be directed by Scott Derrickson, whose previous credits include Marvel’s Doctor Strange, Sinister, Deliver Us from Evil, and The Exorcism of Emily Rose. Derrickson is also set to direct the Locke & Key pilot episode recently ordered by Hulu.

Connelly won an Oscar for her role in A Beautiful Mind. Her other film roles include Jim Henson’s Labyrinth, Requiem for a Dream, Hulk, The Day the Earth Stood Still, 9, and Noah. When it comes to TV, Connelly has only appeared in a couple of TV movies and one series, The $treet, which only ran for 12 episodes on FOX in 2000-2001.

[Source: Deadline]

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