USA Network has found its star for their reboot of John Grisham’s The Rainmaker.
Mad Men alum John Slattery will be leading the yet-to-be-announced cast of the drama from Lionsgate Television and Blumhouse Television that counts Grisham, along with writer Michael Seitzman (Code Black, Intelligence), Jason Richman (Stumptown, The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon), David Gernert and Jason Blum as executive producers. Richman and Seitzman co-wrote the pilot.
Slattery will play Leo F. Drummond, one of Grisham’s most iconic characters, a legendary lion of the courtroom and senior partner at Tinley Britt, the powerful firm that Rainmaker protagonist Rudy Baylor is up against.
The logline reads: “Fresh out of law school, Rudy Baylor goes head-to-head with courtroom lion Leo Drummond (Slettery) as well as his law school girlfriend. Rudy, along with his boss and her disheveled paralegal, uncover two connected conspiracies surrounding the mysterious death of their client’s son.”
The straight-to-series order for a Rainmaker reboot, as THR previously reported, marks USA Network’s first non-shared scripted series since 2020. The cabler, home to former hits Suits and White Collar — which have seen a resurgence, thanks to Netflix — was previously ranked as the most watched cable network for a dozen years straight.
The Rainmaker series comes as Lionsgate and Blumhouse recently teamed up on a multi-picture film deal with Blumhouse reimagining horror classics from the Lionsgate library.
Slattery’s television credits include Mrs. America, The Good Fight, 30 Rock, Documentary Now, Arrested Development, Sex and the City, Veep and K Street. He was nominated four times for his tole as Roger Sterling on Mad Men, and earned a Critics’ Choice nomination for guest starring in Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp. His big screen credits include Tom McCarthy’s Oscar-winning Spotlight, Ant Man, Iron Man 2, Flags of Our Fathers and Traffic, among others.
On Broadway, he has starred in the Pulitzer Prize-winning Rabbit Hole, a revival of Betrayal and, more recently, Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur’s The Front Page opposite Nathan Lane. He has directed episodes of Mad Men, Judd Apatow’s Love and the features God’s Pocket and Maggie Moore(s) starring Jon Hamm and Tina Fey.
Slattery is repped by Gersh and Sloane Offer Weber and Dern.