Daniel Craig to Star in Showtime’s ‘Purity’ Series

Daniel Craig in Spectre
Daniel Craig as James Bond in ‘Spectre’ (Photo © 2015 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc., Danjaq, LLC and Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc)

Daniel Craig (James Bond in Spectre, Skyfall, and Quantum of Solace) has signed on to star and executive produce Purity, a limited series set up with Showtime. The series will be based on Jonathan Franzen’s bestselling novel and has Todd Field (Little Children) on board to write, direct, and executive produce. Author Franzen will also be involved as a writer and executive producer. Writer David Hare, Scott Rudin, and Eli Bush are also executive producing.

According to Showtime’s official announcement, the limited series will consist of 20 episodes airing over two years. Filming’s expected to get underway in 2017.


“Jonathan Franzen’s Purity is an epic American novel that pulses with the energy of a psychological thriller. I whipped through it in a week,” said David Nevins, President and CEO, Showtime Networks Inc. “His gripping and timely story has attracted a powerhouse team – Todd Field, Scott Rudin, Eli Bush, David Hare, along with Franzen himself, and the brilliant Daniel Craig who is perfectly cast as the charismatic, mysterious ‘Andreas Wolf.’ Put it all together and Purity promises to be the kind of taut, long-form, serialized storytelling that is the best of premium television, and is precisely what we at Showtime aspire to deliver.”

The Plot: Purity is a morally complex story of youthful idealism, extreme loyalty and cold-blooded murder. Jonathan Franzen’s intricately plotted novel is populated by characters both hungry for the truth and desperate to hide it. From STASI offspring to Oakland anarchists, Franzen tracks his characters’ landscapes as varied as East Berlin, the Bolivian jungle, East Harlem walk-ups, and the California Redwoods. Purity is at once supremely ambitious in scope and intensely intimate in its treatment of character – a decades-spanning tragicomedy that builds to a contemporary climax.