“Blade” butt-kicker Wesley Snipes has been tapped to star in the NBC drama pilot “Endgame,” a spokesperson for the production told TheWrap on Monday.
From “The Blacklist” producers John Davis and John Fox, the project follows a Las Vegas security expert, played by Philip Winchester (“Strike Back”), swept up in a high-stakes game that forces him to complete certain challenges to save innocent lives. Snipes will play an intelligent, mysterious and dryly sarcastic pit boss named Johnson, who oversees the game.
John Rogers (“Leverage”) will pen the script. Davis and Fox will executive produce “Endgame” on behalf of Davis Entertainment and with Sony Pictures Television.
Snipes is best known for his roles in big-budget action movies and thrillers, including “Demolition Man,” “Murder at 1600,” “Drop Zone” and the Marvel-inspired “Blade” trilogy, in which he starred as the titular sword-wielding half-vampire hero. Other notable film credits include starring opposite Sean Connery in “Rising Sun” and in the comedies “Major League” and “To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar.”
Snipes’ television credits are far less prolific. He appeared on a single episode of NBC’s “Miami Vice” in 1986 and later had a run on ABC’s short-lived adventure series “H.E.L.P.,” alongside John Mahoney and David Caruso. But “Endgame” would mark the actor’s biggest TV role to date, should the project go to series.
Snipes was convicted of tax evasion and went to prison from 2008 to 2010. Since then he has starred in the third installment of Lionsgate’s aging action hero franchise, “The Expendables 3.” The actor was also reportedly close to nabbing the role of Lucious on Fox’s breakout musical drama “Empire,” but the role eventually went to Terrence Howard.
