Fox has found a foe for Matt Dillon in Wayward Pines.
Academy Award winner Melissa Leo has landed a key role in the Fox event series from Chad Hodge and M. Night Shyamalan, The Hollywood Reporter has learned.
STORY: Matt Dillon to Star in Fox Event Series 'Wayward Pines'
The 10-episode drama is based on the best-selling novel of the same name by Blake Crouch, and is described as a thriller in the vein of Twin Peaks. The project revolves around Ethan Burke (Dillon), a Secret Service agent who arrives in the bucolic town of Wayward Pines, Id., on a mission to find two missing federal agents. But instead of answers, Ethan's investigation only turns up more questions. Each step closer to the truth takes Ethan further from the life he knew, from the husband and father he was, until he must face the terrifying reality that he may never get out of Wayward Pines alive.
Leo will play Nurse Pam -- the intense, unpredictable nurse who first takes care of Ethan when he wakes up in the Wayward Pines hospital. But it soon seems Pam may be more interested in harming than healing. She and Ethan grow into deadly rivals and her role in the town of Wayward Pines proves much deeper than it first appears.
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The Playboy Club's Hodge penned the script, with Shyamalan, Hodge, Donald De Line and Ashwin Rajan on board to exec produce the FX Productions effort. Fox landed the project, based on a spec from Hodge, after a competitive bidding situation. Fox will bow the 10-episode drama in 2014.
For Leo, Wayward will mark her first small-screen gig following the upcoming fourth and final season of HBO's Treme. Her credits include The Fighter, for which she won a supporting actress Oscar. Leo also was nominated for lead actress in a film for 2008's Frozen River. For his part, Dillon also has an Oscar nomination under his belt -- for his supporting turn in 2004's Crash. Leo is repped by CAA and Untitled Entertainment.
Wayward and the revived 24 are the first two event series greenlit at Fox with several others in development as the network looks to limited fare as a way to bridge the gaps between seasons and push into year-round scripted programming.
Email: Lesley.Goldberg@thr.com; Twitter: @Snoodit
