The new western series is set to debut in 2017 on AMC.
Viewers who were sad to see the end of Hell on Wheels got a fleeting glimpse of good news during Saturday night’s airing of the series finale: AMC has another western drama in the offing. According to the teasing ads aimed to whet our appetite, The Son, starring former 007 Pierce Brosnan, will premiere next year on the cable network.
Based on Philipp Meyer’s acclaimed novel, the series is described by AMC as a multi-generational epic that tells the story of America’s birth as a superpower through the bloody rise of one Texas family. The first 10-episode season will compare and contrast parallel narratives in two different time periods. In one, we’ll follow the story of young Eli McCullough after he is kidnapped and indoctrinated into a tribe of Comanches in 1849. In the other, set 60 years later, we’ll see a grown Eli struggle to maintain his family’s cattle empire during the turbulent Bandit Wars of South Texas.
Brosnan will portray the elder Eli, charismatic patriarch of the McCullough family. As an adult, he applies the brutal Comanche worldview to his business dealings. He was born on the day Texas became an independent Republic, earning him the nickname “First Son of Texas.” But he is viewed by many as a relic of the Wild West. And, truth to tell, Eli is uneasy with the inexorable taming of Texas and the uncertain future of his legacy.
By the way: The Son — which currently is filming on location in the Austin area — won’t be Brosnan’s first rodeo. The Irish-born actor also starred in Seraphim Falls, a gritty 2006 western in which he played a Union Army veteran hunted by a former Confederate soldier (Liam Neeson) who blames him for the deaths of his wife and children. If that plot sounds slightly similar to the original premise of a certain just-completed AMC series, consider this: The movie was directed by David Von Ancken, who later directed several episodes of Hell on Wheels – including the first and last episodes.