Double Oscar winner Ang Lee is moving over to television after winning the Best Director Academy Award last month for “Life of Pi.” U.S. cable channel FX said on Thursday that the Taiwanese filmmaker will direct the pilot episode of its drama “Tyrant,” about an unassuming American family drawn into the affairs of a turbulent Middle Eastern nation.
It is Lee's first venture into directing for television and his first project since 2012's “Life of Pi,” the tale of a young Indian boy shipwrecked with a tiger that won four Oscars in February.
Production is due to start in the summer but no broadcast date or casting has been announced. Howard Gordon and Gideon Raff — the team behind Emmy-winning psychological thriller “Homeland” — are the executive producers.
“Ang Lee has demonstrated time and again an ability to present characters with such depth and specificity that they reveal the universal human condition,” FX President John Landgraf said in a statement.
Lee, 58, is one of the more versatile directors in the industry, his work ranging from martial arts film “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” to British literary classic “Sense and Sensibility” and sci-fi action movie “Hulk.”
He won his first Oscar in 2006 for directing the gay cowboy drama “Brokeback Mountain.”
FX, and TV production company Fox 21, which is producing “Tyrant” along with FX Productions, are all units of News Corp.