The Weinstein Company is developing a TV series about the 1993 Branch Davidian siege in Waco, Texas, and has set Michael Shannon and Taylor Kitsch to star. Brothers John Erick Dowdle and Drew Dowdle will write the series with the former directing.
Shannon will play lead FBI negotiator Gary Noesner, and Kitsch is set as David Koresh, notorious leader of the religious group that was holed up in their compound for nearly two months. The pair will executive produce along with the Dowdle brothers.
The series, which TWC expects to shop out to networks starting next month,
explores the true-life events leading up to and chronicling the 51-day siege between the FBI, ATF and Koresh’s sect. It will be told from several perspectives of those most intimately involved on both sides of the conflict. The series will be based largely on two biographies: A Place Called Waco by David Thibodeau, a Branch Davidian who is one of the nine survivors of the fire that ended the siege on April 19, 1993, and Sinful Messiah by Noesner, the FBI’s Special Agent in Charge of Negotiations during the ordeal.
