Quentin Tarantino in Talks to Direct Timothy Olyphant for FX’s ‘Justified: City Primeval’
Samantha Bergeson
Quentin Tarantino‘s next project may not be his final film, but rather a move into TV.
Deadline has reported that the auteur is currently in talks to direct “one or two episodes” of FX‘s upcoming limited series “Justified: City Primeval,” with Timothy Olyphant reprising his role as U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens.
IndieWire has reached out to FX for comment.
Tarantino’s attachment to the “Justified” revival seven years after the series wrapped would reunite the “Kill Bill” director with his “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” performer, as well as author Elmore Leonard. Tarantino’s 1997 film “Jackie Brown” is based on Leonard’s novel “Rum Punch,” and Tarantino has also previously optioned several Leonard titles, including the western “Forty Lashes Less One.”
“Justified: City Primeval” uses Leonard’s 1980 novel “City Primeval: High Noon in Detroit” as source material, centering the story on Leonard’s Givens character.
FX’s “Justified” ran for six years before ending in 2015 after winning a Peabody and two Emmys. Per the official logline, “City Primeval” returns to Givens’ story eight years after he left Kentucky and now is based in Miami, balancing life as a marshal and part-time father of a 14-year-old girl. A chance encounter on a Florida highway sends him to Detroit, where he crosses paths with Clement Mansell, aka the Oklahoma Wildman, a violent sociopath who’s already slipped through the fingers of Detroit’s finest once and wants to do so again.
Olyphant is executive producing alongside showrunners and writers Dave Andron and Michael Dinner, and original series creator Graham Yost, with Dinner the lead director on the show. Sarah Timberman and Carl Beverly are also executive producers, with Peter Leonard, Taylor Elmore, and Chris Provenzano. Walter Mosley is consulting producer and V.J. Boyd, Eisa Davis, and Ingrid Escajeda are writers.
Tarantino previously announced that his 10th film will be his last. The “Pulp Fiction” icon has teased an internationally bent Spaghetti Western, a comedy, or even “Kill Bill 3” starring real-life mother-daughter duo Uma Thurman and Maya Hawke as his farewell flick. Or will it be a “Reservoir Dogs” reboot or an Adam Driver-led “Rambo”?
Any speculation certainly is “Justified.”
