Daniel Craig to star in Purity

Daniel Craig will feature in a new psychological thriller, Purity, announced by Showtime, and set to screen on Stan.

Comprising 20 episodes over 2 years, the series is based on the novel of the same name from Jonathan Franzen.

Purity is described as “a morally complex story of youthful idealism, extreme loyalty and cold-blooded murder. Jonathan Franzen’s intricately plotted novel is populated by characters both hungry for the truth and desperate to hide it. 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. Purity is at once supremely ambitious in scope and intensely intimate in its treatment of character – a decades-spanning tragicomedy that builds to a contemporary climax.”

Todd Field (Little Children, In the Bedroom) will write, direct and executive produce, along with executive producers Scott Rudin, Eli Bush, David Hare and Jonathan Franzen. Hare and Franzen will also serve as writers on the series. Field will direct every episode.

“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,” said David Nevins, President and CEO, Showtime Networks Inc. “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.”

Production will begin in 2017.