Syfy has summoned Jason Ralph and Sosie Bacon for the lead roles in The Magicians, its adaptation of the bestselling fantasy trilogy by Lev Grossman.

Ralph (Looking, Blue Bloods) will star as Quentin Coldwater, a brilliant and withdrawn young man recruited as a student at the mysterious Brakebills College for Magical Pedagogy in Upstate New York, where he discovers that the Narnia-like world from a series of children’s books he loved as a child is all too real and poses a danger to humanity.

Bacon (The Closer) will play the intensely shy Alice, who's an outcast among her fellow Brakebills students but emerges as the most brilliant practitioner of magic in her class.

The two join the previously cast Stella Maeve as Julia, Hale Appleman as Elliot and Arjun Gupta as Penny.

Produced by Universal Cable Productions, the pilot was written by John McNamara (Prime Suspect) and Sera Gamble (Supernatural); Michael London (Milk) is producing with Janice Williams (All Good Girls). Production is set to begin this month in New Orleans.