Even Sean Penn Is Joining Peak TV

We haven’t seen much from Sean Penn lately. The actor’s last big screen role was in 2015’s “Taken“-esque “The Gunman,” and his last project, the directorial effort “The Last Face,” was a disastrous flop. Everyone’s gotta eat, and it’s been a while since Penn has been involved in something worth his talents, so he’s gonna kill two birds with one stone by following the growing herd to Peak TV.

The actor is headed to Hulu where he’ll star in “The First.” The series comes from “House Of Cards” creator Beau Willimon, and is a drama set in the near future about the first human mission to Mars, and it explores the challenges of taking the first steps toward interplanetary colonization. So, kinda sounds like politics in space, which is actually just fine by me. Hulu has already given the project a straight-to-series order, and having recently clean up at the Emmys with “The Handmaid’s Tale,” they’ve proven they’re a contender for ambitious storytelling right alongside their streaming rivals at Netflix and Amazon.

Production on “The First” begins this year, and it will start airing in 2018. It sounds like this will be another show worthy of appointment viewing. [Variety]