Lee Pace isn't a household name, but you may remember him as the star of the terrific but short-lived ABC series Pushing Daisies. He also appeared on the big screen recently, with roles in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and Lincoln.
Now it's being reported that Pace will return to the small screen in the AMC pilot for Halt & Catch Fire, a show we're watching closely for a couple reasons.
As we relayed a while back, Halt & Catch Fire is the brainchild of Dallas native Chris Cantwell and focuses on Texas' "computing boom" of the 1980s. More details emerged yesterday, in the Hollywood Reporter:
Pace, whose recent credits include The Hobbit, will play Joe MacMillan, who is often the smartest guy in the office and two steps ahead of both friends and enemies. Once a superstar salesman at IBM, he recently departed under mysterious circumstances only to resurface at an also-ran Dallas tech company named Cardiff Giant. He arrives in Dallas with a plan to force the company into the new era of the PC boom.
Mackenzie Davis (Smashed) will star alongside Pace, as Cameron How, a "punk computer-programming grad student" who "is a magnet for MacMillan, earning her a gig with Cardiff Giant."
The pilot was written by Cantwell and Chris Rogers. Cantwell is from Plano and graduated from Jesuit in 2000. Mark Johnson and Melissa Bernstein, producers on AMC's juggernaut hit Breaking Bad, will serve as producers.
There's no word yet on whether, or how much, filming will take place in the Dallas area.