Last month, it was revealed that CBS had overcome numerous false starts to secure a pilot order for its planned Training Day series.
Set a full 15 years after Antoine Fuqua’s seminal original, sources close to production claimed that the network would hew closely to Training Day‘s good cop, bad cop dynamic, and CBS has today filled one of those roles. Boarding the pilot to portray a seasoned officer in the vein of Denzel Washington’s unhinged maniac Alonzo is Bill Paxton, who joins the series as Frank Rourke, a “veteran LAPD cop who heads up the Special Investigation Section (SIS).”
Hunting down the worst of the worst, Paxton’s no-nonsense expert lives by the law of the jungle – “King Kong ain’t got shit on me!” – reluctantly agreeing to take Kyle Craig under his wing to show him the tricks of the trade while working in the narcotics division. Babysitting isn’t part of Rourke’s M.O., however, and if CBS and executive producer Danny Cannon – who will also direct the pilot episode – can channel even a fraction of the explosive relationship at the heart of Fuqua’s Training Day, consider us hooked.
And that’s perhaps one of the early votes of confidence behind-the-scenes on Training Day – the fact that Antoine Fuqua is attached to produce. He’ll be joined by Jerry Bruckheimer and his Warner Bros. Television banner, working from a script produced by Former LAPD detective Will Beall.
