Michael Chiklis of The Shield and Gotham fame officially has a new television home.
Paramount Network gave a 10-episode series order to Coyote, a new hourlong drama from Sony Pictures Television starring the 55-year-old actor as a former border patrol agent.
Michelle MacLaren, an executive producer on AMC’s Breaking Bad and director on HBO’s Game of Thrones, will helm the pilot and executive produce the series. David Graziano, a co-executive producer on Starz’s American Gods, serves as showrunner.
Chiklis will play Ben Clemens, “who, after 32 years as a border patrol agent, is forced to work for the very people he spent his career trying to keep out of America,” according to the show’s logline. “Now exposed to life on the other side of the wall, Ben will start to question his black and white views of the world, challenging his ideology and his loyalties.”
“David Graziano, our whole creative team, and I are excited to make a show with Paramount Network and Sony that will dramatize a conversation between Mexico and America,” MacLaren said in a statement. “I have wanted to work with Michael Chiklis for a long time and am thrilled he is playing such a complex character whose journey will expose multiple points of view on this relevant and complicated issue.”
Graziano will also write Coyote with Michael Carnes and Josh Gilbert. Along with Graziano, Barnes, Gilbert, and MacLaren, other EPs include Mike Richardson, Keith Goldberg, and Rebecca Hobbs.
Related content:
Gotham star Cory Michael Smith puts ‘hopeful’ spin on haunting AIDS drama in 1985 trailer
The Shield cast stages a surprise reunion
CBS casts Michael Chiklis as — what else? — a veteran detective