The Straight Outta Compton actor — who’s currently recurring on The Walking Dead as Heath — has landed the starring role in 24: Legacy, Fox’s in-the-works reboot of the seminal real-time thriller.

Hawkins will portray Eric Carter, a strong and smart former Army Ranger who finds himself pulled back into action as his past comes looking for him. He eventually turns to CTU for help in saving his life and stopping what potentially could be one of the largest-scale terror attacks on American soil.
“There’s a time jump, a new organization, a completely different story,” Fox co-chairman and CEO Dana Walden teased last week. “It’s a contemporary story about the potential to activate sleeper cells in the United States. There are nods in the pilot to prior CTU agents, but no ongoing characters.”

 

Fox has thus far only ordered a pilot, which will feature nods to prior CTU agents but no ongoing characters — that includes Kiefer Sutherland’s Jack (although the actor may serve as an EP on the project alongside fellow 24 vets Howard Gordon, Manny Coto and Evan Katz).

“I have said from the beginning that the real star of 24 is the idea, and I mean that wholeheartedly,” Sutherland recently said of the revival. “I have every faith they’ll do something cool and clever.”
The new series would span 12 episodes, similar to the recent, acclaimed limited series.