Jon Hamm Is an ‘American Hostage’ in New MGM+ Thriller Series

Jon Hamm has just made his post-Mad Men return to TV, and now he’s set to lead another series. The Your Friends and Neighbors star will headline the first season of American Hostage, a new anthology series on MGM+. Deadline reports that Hamm will reprise the role he played on the scripted podcast of the same name that the TV show will adapt. The series is set to film in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada in the fall.

Hamm will star on the series as Fred Heckman, a well-liked Indianapolis radio reporter who finds himself in a life-or-death situation in 1977 when local man Tony Kiritsis takes his mortgage broker Richard O. Hall, who he believes has scammed him, hostage at the point of a sawed-off shotgun. Kiritsis held Hall hostage in his apartment for 63 hours, during which time he made frequent calls to Heckman’s radio station. Kiritsis’ demands and rants were broadcast on the air as Heckman tried to calm him down, making it an unforgettable experience for Indianapolis’ citizens. The podcast also starred Joe Perrino (Power), Dylan Baker (The Americans), Carla Gugino (The Fall of the House of Usher), and Becky Ann Baker (Girls); it is unclear if any of them will reprise their roles in live-action with Hamm. American Hostage will be an anthology series; each subsequent season, if it is renewed, will center around a different hostage crisis throughout history.

Who Are the Other Creatives Behind ‘American Hostage’?

American Hostage is co-created by Shawn Ryan (The Night Agent) and Eileen Myers (Big Love). In addition to starring, Hamm also executive produces alongside Ryan, Myers, Connie Tavel, Sharon Hoffman, and Ryan’s MiddKid Productions partner, Marney Hochman. Shawn Christensen and Gabriel Mason of Criminal Content, the company that produced the American Hostage podcast, will also executive produce. It is a production of Sony Pictures Television. Michael Wright, the head of MGM+, says “This is a fascinating story about real people engaged in a real-time life-or-death struggle to keep a desperate hostage situation from spinning out of control, and I can’t think of a more gifted actor on whom to center the story than Jon.”

American Hostage won’t be the only fictionalized version of the 1977 Indianapolis hostage crisis hitting screens in the near future. Gus Van Sant filmed Dead Man’s Switch, a movie retelling of the incident, earlier this year. It will star Bill Skarsgård as Kiritsis, Dacre Montgomery as Hall, and Colman Domingo as Heckman.

American Hostage is in development at MGM+, and will film in the fall; no release date has yet been announced. Stay tuned to Collider for future updates.

Source: Deadline