AMC's Dark Winds Casts Rainn Wilson Alongside Zahn McClarnon

Publish date: 2024-06-16

AMC's adaptation of Tony Hillerman's Leaphorn & Chee book series has added Rainn Wilson to the cast. Dark Winds is set in the 1970s and follows a pair of Navajo police officers as they search for clues in a grisly double homicide case. The case forces them to challenge their spiritual beliefs and come to terms with their own traumatic pasts, which is why the series is described as a psychological thriller.

Zahn McClarnon and Kiowa Gordon were previously announced as Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee, respectively, in addition to Jessica Matten, Noah Emmerich, and Rob Tepper.

Wilson has been cast as a series regular and will be appearing as Devoted Dan, a pious missionary who relies on his divine faith to recruit followers to the gates of his used car lot, rather than the gates of heaven. He is a degenerate and practitioner of every Biblical sin he condemns others for.

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Hillerman published Leaphorn & Chee books from 1970 until 2006, with his daughter publishing a new novel in 2013, after her father's death in 2008. She has written five novels using her father's characters, though the protagonist of her series is Jim Chee's wife, Officer Bernadette Manuelito, who is played by Matten in Dark Winds.

In an official statement, AMC's President of Original Programming Dan McDermott stated that the writer's room would be staffed entirely by Native American writers, would be filmed mostly on Native American lands, and that the Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nex had given his full approval for the series.

In addition to starring, McClarnon is set to executive produce, alongside showrunner Vince Calandra, writer Graham Roland, and Chris Eyre who will direct the pilot. George R.R. Martin, Robert Redford, Tina Elmo, and Vince Gerardis are also executive produces on Dark Winds. The first season of the series will air on AMC next year, with six episodes.

KEEP READING: 'Dark Winds': Western Noir Thriller Series from EPs George R. R. Martin & Robert Redford Greenlit at AMC

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