Late last year, word arrived that Sons Of Anarchy creator Kurt Sutter's planned spin-off from the biker series had reached pilot stage. It's now begun casting, and Edward James Olmos is the first person to join the potential new show.
Co-created by Sutter and Elgin James, the series – currently known as Mayans MC, though that may not be the final title – will follow the struggles of EZ Reyes, a prospect in the Mayan Motorcycle Club, based on the border between California and Mexico.
And because every Sons central character needs a complicated father figure, Olmos is on to play Felipe Reyes, once a strong Mexican patriarch, now suffering from the combined forces of bullet wounds and hard labour, who is trying to keep his past sins buried while helping his son stay on the right side of the law. If we know anything about this world, that will not be an easy task.
Olmos is a character veteran who has been working since the 1970s and has credits on a wide variety of TV and movies including Blade Runner, The West Wing and Miami Vice, and he won our lasting loyalty playing William Adama on the Battlestar Galactica reboot.
The cameras should be rolling on the pilot in March, but there's no indication of if or when it'll hit screens.