There’s no doubt that 2021 was a banner year for Andrew Garfield, who not only reprised his role as Peter Parker in Spider-Man: No Way Home, but also earned an Oscar nomination for Best Actor for his leading role in tick, tick…BOOM!. For Garfield’s next move, he’s headlining an FX original miniseries, Under the Banner of Heaven, which is heading directly to Hulu later this year.
FX has debuted the first teaser trailer for the drama, which is based upon Jon Krakauer’s 2003 true crime book of the same name. In the trailer, Garfield plays Detective Pyre, a man who is also an elder in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. There’s a sense of foreboding in this teaser that reminds us of HBO’s True Detective. But for Pyre, the stakes are far more personal. A brutal murder has forced him to reexamine everything he thought he knew about his faith.
The actual crimes occurred in 1984 when Brenda Lafferty and her infant daughter, Erica, were murdered by members of an LDS splinter group who claimed that they received divine instruction to kill the mother and her child. The miniseries may take some liberties with the original tale, but it’s clear that Pyre is very disturbed by not only the murders, but the beliefs that allowed Brenda and Erica’s murderers to justify their actions in the name of the lord. Brenda is portrayed by Daisy Edgar-Jones, who rose to prominence in 2020 thanks to her starring role in the Hulu series Normal People.
Dustin Lance Black (Milk, When We Rise) adapted Under the Banner of Heaven for television. Black is also executive producing the miniseries alongside Ron Howard and Brian Grazer. A series premiere date hasn’t been revealed, but it will stream exclusively under the FX on Hulu banner.
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