Aaron Paul In Talks To Star In HBO Spy Drama Pilot, THE MISSIONARY

Breaking Bad‘s breakout star, the Emmy-winning Aaron Paul, is in talks to play the lead in HBO’s newly piloted Cold War spy drama The Missionary. The series will come from writer Charles Randolph (The Interpreter), and has the involvement of familiar HBO producers Stephen Levinson and Mark Wahlberg, along with The Tipping Point author Malcolm Gladwell (who is a friend of Randolph’s). For more on The Missionary, hit the jump.

If Paul signs on with the project, it will mark his first return to HBO since his recurring role on Big Love, which ended its series run last year. It will also be the first follow-up project to his highly successful run on Breaking Bad, which starts the first of its two-part final season in July.

According to Deadline, The Missionary will be set in 1960s Berlin, where a young American missionary (as if there was any doubt) becomes involved with the CIA.

The series’ four producers have all reportedly been looking to do a spy drama for a long time, and joined forces after bringing the project to HBO last fall. Levinson and Wahlberg are certainly no strangers to the premium networking, having produced four series for them already, including Boardwalk Empire, Entourage, How to Make It In America and In Treatment.

The series will also be produced in conjunction with Levinson’s Leverage and Wahlberg’s Closest to the Hole production companies.

The announcement of the project comes on the heels of another spy series, FX’s The Americans, about undercover KGB spies in the U.S., starring Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys.