TNT has cast Hamilton star Daveed Diggs to star in the television adaptation of Snowpiercer. Doctor Strange director Scott Derrickson will helm the pilot and executive produce the series.

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The one-hour drama is based on Le Transperceneige, the 1982 post-apocalyptic French graphic novel by Jacques Lob and Jean-Marc Rochette, adapted in 2013 by Bong Joon-ho as a sci-fi thriller starring Chris Evans and Tilda Swinton.

Snowpiercer is set seven years after the world has become a frozen wasteland, and the remnants of humanity inhabit a gigantic, perpetually moving train that circles the globe, providing a platform for an exploration of social injustice, class warfare and the politics of survival.

Diggs will play Layton Well, "a prisoner barely surviving the harsh conditions in the tail end of the train." Described as a quiet thinker who spends his days sniffing industrial-waste-turned-drug Chronole and tending to his rats, Layton becomes a "reluctant" participant in the struggle that could upend the hierarchy of the train.

This is the second pilot Derrickson has been announced to direct in recent months, following Hulu's Locke and Key.

The pilot is co-produced by Tomorrow Studios and TNT’s own Studio T, with Josh Friedman (War of the Worlds, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles) serving as executive producer, writer and showrunner.