Chiwetel Ejiofor is set to headline Paramount+'s The Man Who Fell to Earth TV series.
The Man to Fell to Earth is based on Walter Tevis' 1963 sci-fi novel of the same name. Tevis' book was previously adapted into a cult 1976 film starring David Bowie as Thomas Jerome Newton, an alien who crash-lands on Earth while seeking a way to help his home planet, which is going through a terrible drought. Per Deadline, Ejiofor will star in the Paramount+ series as "a new alien character [who] arrives on Earth at a turning point in human evolution and must confront his own past to determine our future."
"Chiwetel Ejiofor's stage and film career are staggering in their bravery, commitment and quality," said The Man Who Fell to Earth co-showrunners Alex Kurtzman and Jenny Lumet. "He's everything we could imagine and a million things we can't. We couldn't be more thrilled."
The Man Who Fell to Earth was ordered straight to series at CBS All Access in August 2019 but has been relatively slow to move forward since then. It will now debut on Paramount+, ViacomCBS' upcoming rebranding of its streaming platform. The service will launch in the U.S., Canada and Latin America on March 4, with additional rollouts to follow in Australia and the Nordics at a later date.
Ejiofor was nominated for an Oscar for his performance as Solomon Northup in the true story-based 2013 drama 12 Years a Slave. More recently, he starred in the films Locked Down and The Old Guard, in addition to making his directing debut on Netflix's 2019 biographical drama The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, in which he also co-starred. Up next, he will reprise his Marvel Cinematic Universe role as Karl Mordo for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and appear opposite Mark Wahlberg in director Antoine Fuqua's sci-fi action/thriller Infinite.
Another one of Tevis' novels, The Queen's Gambit, was recently turned into a mini-series for Netflix starring Anya Taylor-Joy as a young chess prodigy. The Queen's Gambit was watched by over 62 million viewers and was nominated for two Golden Globes this week, including nods for Taylor-Joy's performance and Best Television Limited Series, Anthology Series or Motion Picture Made for Television.
The Man Who Fell to Earth has yet to set a release date.
Source: Deadline