Julia Roberts’ ‘Homecoming’ Series Picked Up by Amazon for Two Seasons

The show is based on the fictional podcast about a secret government facility

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Jonathan Leisbon

A series based on the thrilling fiction podcast “Homecoming” and starring Julia Roberts has been picked up for a two-season order at Amazon.

“Homecoming” is a six-party political thriller centering on a caseworker at a secret government facility. Roberts will play that caseworker’s supervisor.

Catherine Keener, Oscar Isaac and David Schwimmer starred in the original podcast, which was produced by Gimlet Media and launched in Nov. 2016.

Sam Esmail of “Mr. Robot” fame helped develop the series and is serving as an executive producer, alongside Chad Hamilton of Anonymous Content, Horowitz, Bloomberg and Alicia Van Couvering. Chris Giliberti, Alex Blumberg and Matt Lieber from Gimlet will also executive produce.

This is the second show based on a Gimlet Media property to get the greenlight. The first was “Startup,” hosted by Alex Blumberg and Lisa Chow, which follows all the trials and tribulations of getting a new company off the ground. The first season was about the starting of Gimlet Media, which has since become a large name in the podcasting world with other shows like “Reply All” — about how people shape the internet — and “Crimetown,” about organized crime in Providence, R.I.

Roberts has only been recently stepping into the world of TV. Her first series “Today Will Be Different,” based on the Maria Semple novel, landed at HBO just before the “Homecoming” deal was announced. Roberts is set to produce and star in the series, which hails from Annapurna Television. Semple will write and executive produce.

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