AMC, Warner Horizon pact on series

Miranda Richardson set for untitled thriller

By MIKE FLAHERTY

Richardson

Dale

AMC has pacted with Warner Horizon to produce the pilot for a third original dramatic series on the cabler’s sked.

Referred to by AMC only as “UPT,” or untitled political thriller, the project will star Miranda Richardson and James Badge Dale. It begins lensing in late January in Gotham.

Jason Horwic (NBC’s “Medical Investigation” and FX’s “Pentagon Papers”) created and will exec produce.

The skein “focuses on an analyst at a national think tank who discovers that his employers are not who they seem to be,” said an AMC statement.

According to Joel Stillerman, AMC senior veep of programming and production, the project was inspired by ‘70s conspiracy thrillers such as “Three Days of the Condor” and “The Parallax View.”

Stillerman said: “We thought the time and the zeitgeist were right to tap back into that in a very entertaining way. It’s got that quintessential everybody’s-in-on-it kind of story, which we have a lot of love for here.”

Richardson will play a wealthy society woman who finds herself enmeshed in the story’s central intrigue.Dale plays the protag, whose plight Stillerman described, alluding to “Condor,” as “the phenomenon of a guy who goes out to lunch and comes back and finds that his whole world is changed.”

AMC’s original series now include the dramas “Mad Men” and “Breaking Bad.”