Jeff Daniels To Star In Hulu’s 9/11 Drama Series ‘The Looming Tower’

Former The Newsroom star Jeff Daniels is set for the co-lead role opposite Tahar Rahim in The Looming Tower, Hulu’s straight-to-series drama based on Lawrence Wright’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 9/11 exposé, from Oscar-nominated Dan Futterman (Foxcatcher), Oscar- and Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney (Going Clear) and Legendary Television.

The Looming Tower traces the rising threat of Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda and takes a controversial look at how the rivalry between the CIA and FBI inadvertently might have set the stage for the tragedy of 9/11 and the war in Iraq. It centers on Ali Soufan (Rahim) and John O’Neill (Daniels). O’Neill, the determined, at times bull-headed chief of the New York FBI’s Counter-Terrorism unit, is rightly convinced that the U.S. has been targeted for attack by Al-Qaeda, and he faces deliberately insufficient cooperation from other organs of the federal government, particularly from his counterpart at the frequently antagonistic CIA. Ali Soufan is a young FBI agent on O’Neill’s I-49 anti-terrorism squad who quickly ascends to O’Neill’s protégé due to his brilliance, as well as his fluency in Arabic and Islam.

Futterman, Gibney and Wright will executive produce the series, eyed for a 2017 premiere.

Daniels’ starring role in Aaron Sorkin’s HBO drama series The Newsroom earned him three Emmy nominations, winning in 2013. He is repped by ICM Partners and manager Paul Martino.