The SNOWPIERCER Train Picks Up First Passengers [UPDATED]
UPDATE: Time to take the ticket for a new passenger.
It was announced today that Mickey Sumner has joined the cast of TNT’s television adaptation of Bong Joon Ho’s Snowpiercer. She will play Bess Till, a thoughtful empathetic, and savvy brakeman, a position that’s part of the train’s security force. Bess finds herself at the center of a mystery that rocks the train’s uneasy status quo.
Previous projects of Sumner include reoccurring roles on shows such as Showtime’s The Borias and AMC’s Low Winter Sun. On the larger screen, she has been in a variety of diverse films such as Frances Ha, CBGB, and Tee End of the Tour. Later this year she will star with Tom Cruise in American Made and Steve Carell and Emma Stone in Battle of the Sexes.
ORIGINAL STORY: In November of last year, it was announced that TNT had claimed the Tomorrow Studios TV adaptation of Bong Joon Ho’s first English-language production, Snowpiercer. Now the casting has begun, starting with Tony winner Daveed Diggs and Oscar winner Jennifer Connelly.
The futuristic thriller is based on the 1982 French graphic novel Le Transperceneige by Jacques Love Benjamin Legrand and Jean-Marc Rochette. It takes place seven years after the earth has become a frozen wasteland. The survivors live on a train that just circles the globe, separated by their classes; the wealthy at the front, the less fortunate in the back. The story questions class warfare, social injustice, and the politics of survival. Bong adapted the story into a film in 2013 after discovering the graphic novel during his work on The Host.
The television adaptation will continue the exploration of these social struggles on the train. Diggs’ character, Layton Well, is a prisoner and quiet thinker who spends his time sniffing an industrial waste drug called Chronole and tending to his rats. He becomes a reluctant participant in the struggle that could disrupt the hierarchy of the train.
At the front of the train is Connelly’s character, Melanie Cavill, a First Class passenger who also is the Voice of the Train, responsible for making the daily announcements over the PA system. While most of her fellow “classmates” are dismissive of the passengers in the back of the train, she is curiously fascinated by them.
Josh Friedman will not only write for the show and be the showrunner, he will also executive produce with Tomorrow Studios’ Marty Adelstein and Becky Clements, Bong Joon Ho, Chan-wook Park, Tae-hun Lee, and Dooho Choi. Scott Derrickson will direct the pilot.
After leaving Hamilton, Diggs has set his focus on the smaller screen. He joined the ABC comedy black-ish and the Netflix drama The Get Down. He will also be serving as an executive producer on the new ABC comedy The Mayor this fall.
Connelly has focused her career mainly on movies, starting at a young age in Once Upon a Time In America, Phenomena, and Labyrinth. She won and Oscar, Golden Globe, and a BAFTA Award for her performance in A Beautiful Mind.
Snowpiercer will premiere on TNT in 2018.
