FX has officially ordered a pilot of The Borders, a new series based on Don Winslow’s critically acclaimed trilogy of the same name. Nick Grad, FX’s president of entertainment, announced the pilot earlier today, along with the news that E.J. Bonilla, Frank Blake, Annie Shapero, and Sebastián Buitrón will star in the pilot.
First published with The Power of the Dog in 2006, Don Winslow’s Borders trilogy (also known as the Power of the Dog series) explores America’s 50-year-long war on drugs through characters from both sides of the Mexican-American border, including E.J. Bonilla as DEA Agent Art Keller, alongside Sebastián Buitrón as drug kingpin Adan Barrera, Annie Shapero as teenage girl-turned-hooker Nora Hayden, and Frank Blake as Irishman Sean Callen. According to Deadline, the entire series spans a 45-year period where Keller and Barrera maintain a decades-long blood feud.
After The Power of the Dog, Winslow’s award-winning trilogy continues with The Cartel (2017) and The Border (2020).
Don Winslow’s ‘Borders’ Trilogy Enters the TV World with FX
In February 2019, the LA Times called Winslow’s trilogy “fiction bolted to real life” that “unravel[s] broken lives caught in a mesmerizing mosaic fueled by addiction and haunted by bloodshed.” According to Deadline, the series was initially meant to be adapted into a 2019 feature film by Fox with Ridley Scott as director, but there was “too much story” to fit into a single film, and with Fox being acquired by Disney, the choice was made to hand it off to FX in an “edgy Sons of Anarchy-style series”.
John Landgraf, the FX executive who was responsible for acquiring Don Winslow’s Borders series, gave Deadline the following statement:
“I have known and respected Shane Salerno and Don Winslow for almost 20 years, and am beyond thrilled to be working with them again on the series adaptation of Don’s magnum opus – the trilogy made up of his three critically beloved and commercially successful novels…Nothing excites the team at FX more than the daunting challenge of helping great creators make a television show as ambitious and good as the epically acclaimed books on which it will be based.”
The pilot episode will be produced by FX Productions and is set to begin production in Mexico next year with Zelman and Solerno acting as co-showrunners and executive producers alongside Winslow, Diego Gutierrez, Jayro Bustamante, and Scott Free, per Variety. More information on the series will likely become available as it continues development, but we’re excited to see where it goes.