Viola Davis In Talks To Star In ‘Peacemaker’ Spinoff HBO Max

Viola Davis’ Amanda Waller is the latest DC Comics character getting the small screen treatment.

Deadline understands that HBO Max is developing a Peacemaker and Suicide Squad spinoff series featuring the supervillain with Davis in talks to star and exec produce.

Watchmen writer Christal Henry will write and exec produce the potential series, which comes from Warner Bros. TV

It comes after Deadline revealed that James Gunn, who will exec produce the project, was working on a second Suicide Squad spinoff series. He told us in January that it was “connected to this universe” but “won’t be as much a comedy as Peacemaker.”

Suicide Squad producer and Peacemaker exec producer Peter Safran will also exec produce.

In Gunn’s Suicide Squad and Peacemaker universe, Amanda Waller is a senior civil servant and director of A.R.G.U.S. who established Suicide Squad, wanting to assemble a team of expendable metahumans who would be used to execute covert operations against dangerous threats.

Davis plays her in both Suicide Squad and its sequel. She also has a cameo in Peacemaker’s first season where it becomes clear that she was using her daughter Leota Adebayo to wrongfully frame Peacemaker and put him in prison.

It marks the latest TV role for Davis, who won an Oscar for her performance in Fences. She recently starred as Michelle Obama in Showtime’s The First Lady, having been the lead in ABC’s Shonda Rhimes series How To Get Away With Murder.

Peacemaker, which was renewed for a second season, ended its first season with the biggest single day audience for a Max Original series to-date. Finale viewership was 44% above its series premiere on Jan. 13.

HBO Max and Warner Bros. TV declined to comment.