Jeff Daniels will play the lead role in the six-episode Netflix limited series “A Man in Full,” which is based on Tom Wolfe’s searing novel of the same name about life in Atlanta in the mid-1990s.
The series’ executive producers are David E. Kelley (“Ally McBeal,” “Nine Perfect Strangers,” “Big Little Lies”) and actress and producer Regina King (”If Beale Street Could Talk,” “Watchmen,” “One Night in Miami”). It will be shooting in metro Atlanta.
Daniels will play Charlie Croker, a polarizing and robust Atlanta real estate mogul who faces sudden bankruptcy. Crude, rude and irrepressible, Charlie defends his empire against all takers at any cost. Over more than 700 sprawling pages, the book tackles race and class conflicts in a rising Atlanta.
“A Man in Full” took Wolfe, who researched heavily, 11 years to write. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution covered the book extensively leading up to its release in 1998, including a tongue-in-cheek daily “Wolfe Watch” feature for a time. Sample headline: “Status-tician Tom Wolfe tosses Atlanta into the pop culture mill.” The man wore his signature white suit during a November 1998 day of whirlwind promotional appearances in Atlanta covered by five AJC reporters.
The book was a finalist for the National Book Award, spent 10 weeks at the top of The New York Times bestseller list and received mostly solid reviews. Wolfe died in 2018.
In recent years, Daniels has starred in Netflix’s “Godless,” HBO’s “The Newsroom,” and Showtime’s “The Comey Rule” and “American Rust.”
The series appeared this week on the Georgia film office list of active series so it’s now officially in pre-production.
