The cast for Disney’s gender-swapped series adaptation of Holes has been announced.
According to Variety, Disney+ has confirmed the actors who will be playing the main roles in the pilot of the new version of the classic novel, which was previously made into a film in 2003.
Greg Kinnear will be playing antagonistic camp boss The Warden (Sigourney Weaver in the 2003 film), and SNL’s Aidy Bryant will be energetic camp counsellor Sissy. Shia LaBeouf’s lead character from the original story, Stanley Yelnats, will be replaced by Hayley, played by Shay Rudolph from Netflix series The Baby-Sitter’s Club.
The synopsis for the new series reads: “In this reimagining of the beloved 1998 book from Louis Sachar, a teenage girl is sent to a detention camp where the ruthless Warden forces the campers to dig holes for a mysterious purpose.”
Drew Goddard, whose work includes Daredevil, The Martian, 10 Cloverfield Lane and The Good Place, is on board as executive producer, as is Yellowjackets and The Haunting Of Hill House’s Liz Phang, who will also serve as showrunner. Variety’s report confirms that Jac Schaeffer, who has worked on Marvel’s WandaVision and Agatha All Along, will direct the pilot.
In the novel, Stanley is a young boy with extremely bad luck, who is falsely accused of theft and sent to a juvenile discipline camp in the desert. He’s terrorised by the supervising Warden and forced to dig six-foot holes every day, before discovering a connection between the camp and his own family. It sold millions of copies worldwide, as well as winning multiple awards.
The official character descriptions for Kinnear, Bryant and Rudolph’s roles are below.
Greg Kinnear as The Warden: “The Warden is the boss at Camp Yucca, with a flair for manipulation and getting the upper hand on his campers. He has created a camp ideology to explain the virtue of having girls dig holes, but this is actually a ruse; he is really forcing the girls to labor for a mysterious purpose.”
Aidy Bryant as Sissy: “Sissy is overflowing with camp counselor energy. She seems like a trustworthy big sister figure to the girls, but as a true believer of The Warden’s philosophy, her allegiance lies with him.”
Shay Rudolph as Hayley: “Hayley arrives at Camp Yucca having been wrongly accused. She’s full of heart and tired of her family’s belief that fate is fixed; her arrival at Camp Yucca will inject new hope and optimism into her campmates.”
If the pilot is picked up for a series order, the new Holes will stream on Disney+.