Newcomer John Berchtold has been cast as the young Ted Kaczynski in Discovery Channel’s upcoming FBI crime drama Manhunt: The UNABOMer (formerly titled Manifesto), from Lionsgate and Kevin Spacey and Dana Brunetti’s Trigger Street Productions.The anthology series tells the story about the hunt for Ted Kaczynski, who terrified the nation with a letter bombing campaign in the 1980s and early 1990s. Paul Bettany plays the adult version of Kaczynski. Berchtold was the winner of the first ABC Make Me A Star competition and also performed in the ABC Discover Showcase. He recently finished shooting a series of shorts that he wrote and directed for Eli Roth’s Crypt TV for the Chiller Network. Berchtold is repped by Christopher Nathaniel at Inclusive Management and Production.
Mena Massoud (Open Heart) has booked a recurring role in Amazon’s straight-to-series drama Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan, from the Lost duo of co-showrunner Carlton Cuse and writer Graham Roland, Platinum Dunes, Skydance Media and Paramount TV. Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan is a reinvention with a modern sensibility of the famed and lauded Tom Clancy hero, starring John Krasinski and Abbie Cornish. It centers on Jack Ryan (Krasinski), an up-and-coming CIA analyst thrust into a dangerous field assignment for the first time. He uncovers a pattern in terrorist communications that launches him into the center of a dangerous gambit with a new breed of terrorism that threatens destruction on a global scale. Massoud plays Tarek Kassar. Like any CIA analyst, he’s the best and brightest. A friend and colleague to Jack Ryan (Krasinski), Tarek likes to give Jack a hard time but always has his back. Massoud is repped by Stokes Management and The Characters Agency.
