Peter Dinklage and Rian Johnson Are Still Fighting for the POKER FACE Reset to Happen
Peter Dinklage is currently at the Sundance Film Festival promoting The Shitheads, a drug-fueled road trip comedy directed by Macon Blair, but while he’s celebrating the indie film scene, Dinklage is also looking ahead and hoping one of TV’s smartest crime shows finds new life.
That show is Poker Face, the critically loved mystery series created by Rian Johnson. The series hit a major roadblock in November when Peacock decided not to move forward with a third season.
Even so, the door didn’t fully close. Johnson reportedly began exploring a creative reset that would shift the show to a new platform, with Dinklage stepping into the lead role previously played by Natasha Lyonne.
There’s already been chatter about the series landing at HBO, and late last year Casey Bloys, Chairman and CEO of HBO and Max Content, confirmed that conversations had taken place. For Dinklage, who spent years as a cornerstone of HBO thanks to Game of Thrones, the idea of bringing Poker Face to a new home feels very real.
Speaking with Deadline, Dinklage shared that he’s been in direct talks with Johnson about making it happen. “It’s in the works,” he said. “What I hear is that it’s just hard to take it from one home to put it in another. It’s the complicated nature of that, I believe. But Rian is a creative genius and whatever he wants to write, I would love to be a part of that.”
Dinklage even cracked a joke about the transition, suggesting they could simply rename the series “Roulette Face” if things get tricky.
Poker Face first premiered on Peacock in January 2023, with its second season debuting in May 2025. The show followed Lyonne’s Charlie Cale, a sharp-eyed drifter with an uncanny ability to spot “b*llshit.”
After fleeing her former casino employer, Charlie traveled across the country in her 1969 Plymouth Barracuda, stumbling into murders and unraveling them wherever she landed.
Although Lyonne would no longer be the central focus if the reset moves forward, she’s still closely tied to the series. In December, she said: “I love Dinklage, I love Rian, and we’ll see what happens. I could pop back up. I really need a few years; if I don’t make a movie before I die, I’ll be very bummed out. So let me just get one feature in the can, and we’ll see.”
The series is produced by Johnson’s T-Street Productions and MRC Television, along with Lyonne’s Animal Pictures.
Nothing is officially locked yet, but it’s cool to see Dinklage so enthusiastic about it. If the reset comes together, Poker Face could return in a fresh form with a new lead and the same clever mystery DNA that made it a fan favorite in the first place.