Robert Downey Jr.'s production outfit, Team Downey, has tapped "The Americans" star and Emmy Best Actor winner Matthew Rhys to lead its planned Perry Mason reboot. The limited series is in development at HBO, where the project has been hatching since 2016.
According to Variety, Team Downey is now looking for a director to put the Perry Mason reboot together. Rolin Jones and Ron Fitzgerald will serve as showrunners and head writers. Downey, Rhys, and Joe Horacek, on the other hand, will serve as producers.
Downey was supposed to play the lead role in the Perry Mason reboot. According to Deadline, the actor initially set up the project as a movie with Warner Bros in 2013. However, the film development turned into a limited series for HBO. "True Detective" creator Nic Pizzolatto was supposed to write the initial script.
But sometime in 2018, the actor announced he was not going to star in the series anymore due to his other work commitments. His production outfit, however, will still be developing the show and tapped Jones and Fitzgerald to take over the writing duties from Pizzolatto, who was also too busy by then with the third season of "True Detective" and the prequel to "The Sopranos."
CBS first ran a Perry Mason series in the 1950s, which starred Raymond Burr as the criminal lawyer. The actor reprised the role for the reboot in the 1980s until Burr's death in 1993. The iconic legal eagle character is based on a top-selling fiction written by Erle Stanley Gardner. The author published at least 80 novels in the series before it was adapted as a radio program, a movie and eventually, a TV show.
But Team Downey's Perry Mason version will center on the man as a struggling private investigator. The television show will be a period piece set in 1930s Los Angeles and the story will be triggered by the kidnapping of a child.
Downey happily announced Rhys' casting on his Twitter profile and described the actor as his "new best friend." It's still unclear when production will begin but with the show going behind the cameras in the next few months, the Perry Mason reboot will likely air on HBO by 2020.
Rhys' casting comes just as he has finished six seasons of "The Americans" on FX, which he starred opposite his real-life wife, Keri Russell. The actor also wrapped up filming "A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood" with Tom Hanks as Mrs. Rogers.
