Take a look @ the latest posters supporting the CW network’s Toronto-lensed TV series update of Nikita.
Scheduled to debut Thursday September 9 on the CW, Nikita stars Hong Kong action movie star Maggie Q as ‘Nikita’, Lyndsy Fonseca as ‘Alex’, Shane West as ‘Michael’, Aaron Stanford as ‘Birkhoff’, Ashton Holmes as ‘Thom’, Tiffany Hines as ‘Jaden’, Melinda Clarke as ‘Amanda’ and Xander Berkeley as ‘Percy’.
Nikita is produced by Warner Bros. Television in association with Wonderland Sound and Vision, for executive producers Craig Silverstein, Danny Cannon, McG and Peter Johnson.
“…When she was a deeply troubled teenager, ‘Nikita’ was rescued from death row by a secret US agency known only as ‘Division’, who faked her execution and told her she was being given a second chance to start a new life and serve her country. What they didn’t tell her was that she was being trained as a spy and assassin. Ultimately, Nikita was betrayed and her dreams shattered by the only people she thought she could trust. Now, after three years in hiding, Nikita is seeking retribution and making it clear to her former bosses that she will stop at nothing to expose and destroy their covert operation.
“For the time being, however, Division continues to recruit and train other young people, erasing all evidence of their former lives and turning them into cold and efficient killers. One of these new recruits, ‘Alex’, is just beginning to understand what lies ahead for her and why the legendary Nikita made the desperate decision to run…”
The new series is a fresh take on La Femme Nikita , the 1990 French feature by writer/director Luc Besson, focusing on a ‘new Nikita’, trained to replace the original Nikita government agent after she goes ‘rogue’.
Maggie Q , also appeared in Mission: Impossible III and Live Free or Die Hard.
Besson’s Nikita revolved around ‘Nikita Taylor’ (Anne Parillaud), a teenage delinquent and heroin addict who tries to rob a pharmacy, owned by the parents of a fellow junkie.
When things take a turn for the worse during a police shoot-out and her cohorts are killed, Nikita shoots a policeman, is arrested, tried, convicted of murder and imprisoned for life, with no parole for thirty years.
In prison, Nikita is drugged to simulate death, then awakened in a room where a man (Tchéky Karyo) reveals that although officially listed as a ‘suicide by overdose’, Nikita is actually in the custody of the ‘DGSE’, a French intelligence agency. She is then given the choice, to either work as a DGSE government assassin or be killed.
After some resistance, Nikita joins the agency, with one of her trainers, ‘Amande’ (Jeanne Moreau), transforming her from a degenerate drug addict into a degenerate ‘sleeper agent’.
In 1993, Warner Bros. remade Nikita in English as Point of No Return (aka The Assassin), directed by John Badham, starring Bridget Fonda.
Besson’s story premise was again adapted in 1997 for the Toronto-lensed US/Canadian co-production La Femme Nikita , adapted for TV by Joel Surnow, starring Peta Wilson.
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