John Hawkes Will Play a Las Vegas Superhero in New Amazon Pilot THE LEGEND OF MASTER LEGEND

John Hawkes is one of those guys whose name you might not know, but you've definitely seen his work. He's appeared in TV shows like Deadwood, Lost, and Eastbound & Down, and a metric ton of solid movies, including his Oscar-nominated turn in Winter's Bone. He's a consistently enjoyable presence on screen, but he's often relegated to supporting cast territory and it's rare that he's the lead role in a project. But that's about to change...at least for one big upcoming creative endeavor. 

Deadline reports that Hawkes has scored the lead in a new Amazon pilot called The Legend of Master Legend.

Written by Micah Fitzerman-Blue & Noah Harpster based on Joshuah Bearman’s Rolling Stone article about real-life superheroes, the project centers on Master Legend (Hawkes), a man who tries to defend justice and defeat wrongdoers on the Las Vegas Strip.

Fitzerman-Blue and Harpster are writer/producers for Amazon's successful show Transparent, a show on which the latter also plays the character "Francis." I'd be excited about the potential of this show based solely on the news that Hawkes was teaming up with these guys, but there's another excellent piece of the puzzle that gets me even more excited: James Ponsoldt is directing. He's the director of movies like Smashed, The Spectacular Now, The End of the Tour, and the upcoming The Circle, and he also directed two episodes of Aziz Ansari's Master of None for Netflix. Hopefully this pilot one makes it through Amazon's voting process and gets picked up for a full season run.