Ellen Barkin & Scott Speedman To Star In TNT Drama Pilot 'Animal Kingdom' – TVWise

TNT has cast the first two leads for Animal Kindom.
The New Normal & Happyish star Ellen Barkin and Last Resort‘s Scott Speedman have been tapped for major roles in the hour-long drama pilot from John Wells Productions and Warner Horizon Television which is based on the 2010 feature film of the same name.
Described as a “family crime drama”, Animal Kingdom follows 17-year-old Josh, who moves in with his wild, free-wheeling relatives in their Southern California beach town and is pulled into their life of indulgence and excess. But after Josh discovers that it’s all being funded by criminal activities, it suddenly becomes clear to him that joining the family comes with more danger and excitement than he might be ready to handle
Ellen Barkin will play Janine “Smurf ” Cody, a working-class mom with what appears to be a picket-fence lifestyle, she’s actually the boot-tough matriarch of an organized crime family and has enough authority to make even the most dangerous men tremble in her presence; while Scoot Speedman has been cast as Barry “Baz” Brown, Josh’s uncle who was adopted by the Cody family when he was 12 and now leads the group in their armed robberies, but also thinks of breaking away from a life of crime.
Animal Kingdom was one of the first pilots to get an official pick up as part of new TNT topper Kevin Reilly’s push to refocus the scripted brand and double the amount of drama series on the network. Jonathan Lisco penned the script for the pilot and serves as an executive producer on the Warner Horizon Television produced project alongside John Wells, Andrew Stearn, David Michôd and Liz Watts. Production on the pilot is set to get underway in Los Angeles next month.