Two-time Academy Award winner Anthony Hopkins has signed on to star in Those About to Die, the upcoming Roman gladiator series from Independence Day director Roland Emmerich.
Hopkins is the first actor to be cast in Those About to Die, which has been given a straight-to-series order by Comcast-owned NBCUniversal’s streaming platform Peacock. Emmerich, best known for his sci-fi disaster epics, such as Independence Day, will direct and executive produce the series based on Daniel Mannix’s book of the same name.
The show is described as an epic historical drama set within the “complex and corrupt world of spectacle-driven gladiatorial competition” in ancient Rome featuring “an ensemble of diverse characters across the many layers of Roman society where sports, politics and business intersect and collide.”
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Oscar-nominated screenwriter Robert Rodat (Saving Private Ryan, The Patriot) is the series showrunner.
Hopkins will play Roman Emperor Vespasian in the show — a battle-tested warrior and head of the Flavian bloodline who has taken supreme power after a bloody 10-year civil war. But his position is under threat from the Patricians jockeying for position in the empire and looking to supplant his heirs to the throne.
The Welsh star has won best actor Oscars for his portrayal of serial killer cannibal Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs (1991) and for his depiction of a man suffering from dementia in The Father (2020). Hopkins is also a double Emmy winner, honored with the award for best actor in a limited series or special for playing Adolf Hitler in 1981’s The Bunker, as well as in 1976 for playing Bruno Richard Hauptmann in The Lindbergh Kidnapping Case.
Those About to Die is from Stuart Ford’s AGC Studios and is being produced by Emmerich’s Centropolis Entertainment together with Hollywood Gang Productions and Street Entertainment. High End Productions, an Austria-based company set up by Herbert G. Kloiber and Constantin Film to produce premium European fiction series for the international market, is co-financing Those About to Die and will take European distribution rights to the show. AGC International will control the remaining worldwide rights.
Hollywood Gang’s Gianni Nunnari (300) and Street Entertainment’s Harald Kloser (Independence Day: Resurgence) will executive produce Those About to Die alongside High End’s Kloiber, Martin Moszkowicz, Oliver Berben and Jonas Bauer. Ford and AGC Studios’ chief content officer Lourdes Diaz will executive produce. Italian co-producer Wild Side Productions (My Brilliant Friend) will provide local production services for the series.
Hopkins’ deal was negotiated by Mitch Smelkinson of Goodman Genow Schenkman Smelkinson + Christopher and by Director of Legal and Business Affairs Conor McElroy on behalf of AGC. Hopkins is repped by CAA and Independent Talent Group.
