The setup: more than a decade after the show ended, the actors gather at a fan convention. The line between life and art blurs. The fractured brotherhood ends up facing a real-world threat worse than anything the fictional club dealt with.
Who's in it
Charlie Hunnam created the series, writes it, executive produces, and stars. Joining him, all playing themselves:
- Ron Perlman (Clay)
- Katey Sagal (Gemma)
- Maggie Siff (Tara)
- Mark Boone Junior (Bobby)
- Tommy Flanagan (Chibs)
- Kim Coates (Tig)
- Theo Rossi (Juice)
More casting is still to come. Jonathan Groff — the Happy Endings and This Fool writer, not the Broadway one — serves as showrunner. Rob Mac of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia executive produces. FX Productions and 20th Television produce, and it will air on FX and stream on Hulu.
The elegant part
Here's the practical problem with any Sons of Anarchy reunion: most of those characters are dead. The show ran seven seasons from 2008 to 2014 and treated its cast list like a countdown. Playing themselves solves that in one move, without a resurrection or a flashback structure.
Kurt Sutter, who created the original, is not involved. He did give Hunnam his blessing, and has publicly said he thinks people will like it.
The cast has been doing fan conventions together for twelve years and reportedly stayed close. Now they're making a thriller about what happens at one. That's either a very good idea or the setup to a horror movie, and I suspect the show knows.
Hunnam has been developing this at FX for at least three years. The greenlight follows his first Emmy nomination, for playing Ed Gein in Netflix's Monster.