J.J. Abrams' upcoming HBO series Demimonde has announced the casting of Danielle Deadwyler in the series' lead role.
Deadwyler will be starring as the character Olive Reed, a woman that is separated from both her husband and daughter in some sort of scientific accident. She will need to unravel a conspiracy if she hopes to save her family, now lost in another world. Deadwyler's casting reunites her with HBO once again as she had a role in the limited series Watchmen and most recently appeared as a recurring character in the HBO Max miniseries Station Eleven. Additional television credits for Deadwyle include Atlanta, P-Valley, and The Haves and the Have Nots. In the realm of films, she starred and had a breakout performance in Netflix's The Harder They Fall alongside the likes of Jonathan Majors, Regina King, and Idris Elba. She is also set to star in the upcoming film Till as the titular Mamie Till.
Demimonde is currently in early pre-production at HBO. The series was first reported to be in development in 2018, though very little is still known of the series' finer details even after four years. Abrams did confirm to Collider in an interview back in March 2021 that the entirety of the first season of the upcoming series is already written, saying “The beauty of this time on Demimonde, for example, is we've been able to not just outline the season, but write the season. Not just roughly understand where we want to go over the course of the series, but actually plot it out."
Abrams serves as both the writer and director of the HBO series as well as serving as an executive producer via Bad Robot Productions. Along with Abrams, executive producers on the project include Kira Snyder, Rand Ravich, and Far Shariat who also serve as co-showrunners. Ben Stephenson also executive produces via Bad Robot, with Rachel Rusch Rich, also of Bad Robot, co-executive producing. The show is produced by Bad Robot in association with Warner Bros. Television and HBO. This will mark Abrams' first writing credit on a television series since 2008 when he created the series Fringe for Fox. Other television series credits from Abrams include the likes of Felicity, Alias, and Lost. His most recent screenplays besides Demimonde were the films Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker and Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, both films he also served as director on.
Demimonde does not yet have a release date or release window currently announced.