Daniel Craig to star in Showtime’s limited series ‘Purity’

LOS ANGELES, June 2 (UPI) — British actor Daniel Craig is to star in a limited series based on Jonathan Franzen’s novel Purity, Showtime announced.

Best known for playing James Bond in the four most recent 007 adventures, Craig also will executive produce Purity, a 20-episode, “decades-spanning tragicomedy,” which will air over two years, the cable network said.

Todd Field, whose credits include Little Children and In the Bedroom, will write, direct and executive produce the show. Scott Rudin, Eli Bush, David Hare and Jonathan Franzen are also executive producers on the project.

Hare and Franzen will help write the series and Field will direct every episode. Production is to begin next year.

“Jonathan Franzen’s Purity is an epic American novel that pulses with the energy of a psychological thriller. I whipped through it in a week,” David Nevins, president and CEO of Showtime Networks Inc., said in a statement. “His gripping and timely story has attracted a powerhouse team — Todd Field, Scott Rudin, Eli Bush, David Hare, along with Franzen himself, and the brilliant Daniel Craig who is perfectly cast as the charismatic, mysterious Andreas Wolf. Put it all together and Purity promises to be the kind of taut, long-form, serialized storytelling that is the best of premium television, and is precisely what we at Showtime aspire to deliver.”

“Jonathan Franzen’s intricately plotted novel is populated by characters both hungry for the truth and desperate to hide it,” a synopsis explained. “From STASI offspring to Oakland anarchists, Franzen tracks his characters’ landscapes as varied as East Berlin, the Bolivian jungle, East Harlem walk-ups, and the California Redwoods.”

Craig has not yet publicly declared whether he will star in another Bond picture.