After securing a Best Supporting Actor statuette from the Academy for his turn in Whiplash, J.K. Simmons is venturing into solid genre territory. This summer his grizzled cop will team up with Sarah Connor to battle evil robotic tyrants in Terminator: Genisys, and after that? He’s sticking around in sci-fi town.
According to Deadline, Simmons will star in a new series called Counterpart. Created and written by Justin Marks (The Jungle Book), the series is set to debut on Starz. The Imitation Game‘s Morten Tyldum is on board to direct the first two episodes of what’s described as somewhat of a Fringe-esque series, dealing with the existence of two parallel universes.
Based on the initial report, Counterpart is “an espionage thriller with a metaphysical twist,” and “tells the story of Howard Silk (Simmons), a lowly cog in a bureaucratic UN agency who is turning the last corner of a life filled with regret, when he discovers the agency he works for is guarding a secret: a crossing to a parallel dimension. Through Howard and his “Counterpart” on the other side, Prime, the show will navigate themes of identity, idealism, what ifs, and lost love.”
Counterpart is in the early stages of development at the moment, but it’s expected that Starz will issue the supernatural show a two season order. This signals the network’s confidence in the material and its attached talent, which also includes MRC, Anonymous Content and Gilbert Films, who together are producing the series for Starz.
