Wesley Snipes Leads ‘The Player’ Panel At Comic-Con

NBC’s Sony series The Player takes place in Las Vegas. It’s about Las Vegas. However, as evident in the recent upswing of one-hour drama shoots in Los Angeles, count on the Philip Winchester-Wesley Snipes action drama shooting here.

“We’re shooting in Los Angeles,” creator and showrunner John Rogers said today at Comic-Con. “We want the stunt teams available in L.A. We’ll go back to Las Vegas on a regular basis and bring the actors we need to.”

Shooting in L.A. in lieu of Sin City isn’t uncommon. CSI during its early seasons would shoot at Universal Studios and in suburban Santa Clarita and venturing to Vegas occasionally.

In The Player, Winchester plays Alex Kane, a former intelligence officer who works as a security expert in Las Vegas and whose wife has just been killed. Snipes plays Mr. Johnson, a point man for mysterious billionaires who run the city’s game, and a guy who needs Kane’s muscle help. Rogers said he wanted to launch a show that “kicked the doors off every week.” During the panel he mentioned The X-Files as an inspiration and promised the crowd a labyrinth of mysteries as the season evolves — and, of course, rip-roaring action. Rogers said of Snipes’ enigmatic kingpin character: “Every week, you don’t know if he’s a good guy or bad guy. He’s working in an amoral framework that most people aren’t. I want you to come out of every week going, ‘I can’t believe he just did that!'”

Snipes took to the script, saying that it’s every bit as good as any film script he’s attached himself to in the past. “You can imagine Terrence Stamp in this kind of character; he has elements of that type of personality.” Snipes, who many here at Comic-Con adore from his vampire slayer trilogy Blade, was at the San Diego confab last year with The Expendables 3.

Originally titled Endgame, The Player is produced by Sony TV and Davis Entertainment, which also is behind the hit NBC show The Blacklist. The series premieres at 10 PM September 24 on NBC.