Javier Bardem To Lead Cape Fear TV Series From Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese And Nick Antosca

Javier Bardem is a wonderful actor, a man whose filmography is filled with a diverse array of characters whose appearances span the genre spectrum. He is also, it would be fair to say, an actor who's really good at playing villainous psychopaths — be it No Country For Old Men's Anton Chigurh, Skyfall's Silva, Pirates Of The Caribbean's Captain Salazar, or Lyle, Lyle Crocodile's mendacious Hector P. Valenti. And according to Deadline, another unhinged wrong'un is now in Bardem's sights, as he has signed on to play the notorious killer Max Cady in the latest retooling of Cape Fear, which Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, and Nick Antosca are currently setting up at Apple TV.

Created by The Act's Nick Antosca and set to be executive produced by Spielberg and Scorsese (as well as Bardem), this latest take on Cape Fear — previously adapted from John D. MacDonald's book The Executioners in 1962 with Robert Mitchum in the Cady role, and then again by Scorsese himself in 1991 with Robert De Niro — will take the form of a 10-episode limited series. And, per the description provided to Deadline, this version of the classic nailbiter will be "a tense, Hitchcockian thriller" as well as a reckoning of sorts with America's contemporary obsession with true crime, with the plot largely set to follow the established script. All of which is to say that there'll be a happily married couple, Amanda and Steve Bowden, and said happily married couple's lives will be upended in dramatic fashion when killer Max Cady gets out of jail; the only superficial alteration this time out will be that rather than just the husband being an attorney, in this version of the story both spouses are lawyers.

As far as who'll be playing Amanda and Steve, previously portrayed by Gregory Peck and Polly Bergen in '62 and by Nick Nolte and Jessica Lange in '91, that much remains unknown. As does any kind of timeframe for when we can expect the series to arrive on Apple TV+, a platform that has fostered quite the reputation for intense prestige thrillers with the likes of Presumed Innocent, Black Bird, and Disclaimer*. But with Bardem playing Cady, that creative trio spearheading the project, and the time being ripe to revisit the story through a contemporary lens, you'd have to be, well, crazy not to be hyped to see how this one shakes out.