About a year ago, news broke that the DC/Vertigo comic Scalped was going to become a TV show on WGN America. Not much has happened since but then, out of almost nowhere, actress Lily Gladstone has been cast as one of the leads.
Scalped, written by Jason Aaron and illustrated by R.M. Guéra, debuted in 2007 and ran for 60 issues. It told a complex crime story set on a modern Native American reservation in South Dakota, complete with betrayal, murder and drugs. The reservation was run by a character named Chief Red Crow; Gladstone will play his estranged daughter Carol. Variety broke the news of her casting.
Gladstone isn’t a household name by any means but she’s having a good year. She’s Independent Spirit-nominated for her role in the film Certain Women, and also has the quirky Rami Malek film Buster’s Mal Heart on the way. She’s of Native American descent, too, which hopefully indicates that the producers, who include DC Films’ Geoff Johns, will try to cast the majority of the series with Native American actors. Doug Jung, one of the writers of Star Trek Beyond, wrote the pilot and will be the showrunner.
At the moment, Scalped just has a pilot order so, once casting is done and the show is shot, it’s still going to be a while before you may or may not see it on your TV. But now it’s a lot closer to getting made than it was.
[Variety]