Paul Giamatti will star in a television series based on the 2000s horror franchise Hostel.
The Oscar-nominated actor, 56, will collaborate on the forthcoming project with Eli Roth, Chris Briggs and Mike Fleiss, who are executive producers on the adapted TV series, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The show will be in conjunction with the studio Fifth Season, which also works on the Apple TV+ series Severance.
Sources described the forthcoming project as a ‘modern adaptation’ and ‘elevated thriller’ that will reinvent the Hostel franchise nearly two decades after the first installment, Hostel, arrived in theaters in January of 2006.
The motion picture, written and directed by Roth, starred Jay Hernandez, Derek Richardson and Eythor Gudjonsson.
Paul Giamatti, 56, will star in a television series based on the 2000s horror franchise Hostel. Pictured earlier this year in London
Giamatti will collaborate on the motion picture with Eli Roth, 52, who wrote and directed the first two films. Pictured Monday in LA
The actors played a trio of backpackers arriving in a Slovak city ‘that promises to meet their hedonistic expectations, with no idea of the hell that awaits them,’ according to a logline.
The sequels Hostel: Part II, and Hostel: Part III, were released in 2007 and 2011, respectively.
The initial film garnered $82 million worldwide, the second made $36 million worldwide and the third had a DVD release.
On the forthcoming TV series, Roth is set to write and direct, as he did on the first two movies, while Briggs will also work on the screenplay.
Details about Giamatti were being kept ‘under wraps,’ according to the outlet.
Giamatti told Entertainment Weekly in 2013 that he and Roth had talks while the original Hostel film was in production, as he had been in Czech Republic making the 2006 mystery film The Illusionist with Edward Norton and Jessica Biel.
‘Eli was shooting Hostel in Prague and I was shooting The Illusionist and I met him,’ Giamatti told the outlet. ‘We talked about me actually killing somebody in that movie but it never panned out.’
Giamatti and Roth also worked on Howard Stern’s 1997 biopic Private Parts, as Giamatti played Stern’s adversarial manager Kenny, while an up-and-coming Roth was a production assistant on the comedy.
Giamatti was busy earlier this year amid award season, garnering major plaudits for his performance as Paul Hunham in the feted dramatic comedy The Holdovers.
Jay Hernandez, Eythor Gudjonsson, Derek Richardson were pictured in the 2005 movie
The initial film garnered $82 million worldwide, the second made $36 million worldwide and the third had a DVD release
Giamatti won the Golden Globe for Best Performance by a Male Actor in a Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy for the role.
He was also nominated at the Academy Awards, Screen Actors Guild Awards and BAFTA Awards.
The versatile actor has an expansive resume in TV, having plied his craft on shows such as the Showtime series Billions, and the HBO series John Adams and Too Big to Fail.
