Daisy Ridley (Star Wars, Young Woman and the Sea) plans to return to the small screen with a leading role in a reimagining of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, a TV series from Legendary Television in development at Paramount+.
Ridley will also executive produce alongside the show’s writer Akiva Goldsman (A Beautiful Mind, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds) and Matt Shakman (WandaVision, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters), who will also direct. A writers’ room is currently underway, sources close to production told Deadline.
Legendary TV is producing in association with the Irwin Allen Estate. Allen was behind the 1961 feature film and the ABC TV series of the same name, both of which the new series is based on.
The new Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea series follows brilliant ocean scientist Lee Crane (Ridley), who is pulled into a classified government program after a catastrophic Arctic expedition claims the life of her twin sister. At the center of the program is the USS Seaview, a retro-futuristic submarine found entombed in the ice, marked with symbols from a history that shouldn’t exist, and it powers up only when Lee steps aboard.
Thrust into command of a pressure-cooker crew and an uneasy alliance with government power brokers, Lee leads Seaview on daring undersea missions to contain mysterious forces leaking into our world, all while uncovering a hidden truth about the oceans, an erased chapter of human history, and the once-thought mythical city of Atlantis.
Jon Jashni will also serve as EP, with Derek Thielges as co-producer.
Ridley is best known for her breakthrough role as Rey in the 2015 film Star Wars: The Force Awakens. She reprised the role in Star Wars: Episode VIII: The Last Jedi and in the final film of the Skywalker Saga, Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker. Most recently, she starred in the survival thriller, We Bury the Dead, and the London-set action-thriller Cleaner alongside Clive Owen. Additional credits include the films The Marsh King’s Daughter, Chaos Walking, Ophelia, Murder on the Orient Express, and Peter Rabbit. Ridley has starred in multiple TV shows across her career, including Mr. Selfridge, Toast of London, Younger, and Casualty. Up next, Ridley will be seen in Tim West’s fantasy adventure, Ebenezer: A Christmas Carol, playing Ridley the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, and The Last Resort, a romantic comedy opposite Alden Ehrenreich. She is repped by CAA and Sloane, Offer, Weber & Dern.