Javier Bardem has been cast as Max Cady in the Cape Fear television series from Apple TV+.
Cape Fear was originally a 1962 psychological thriller directed by J. Lee Thompson. An adaptation of the 1957 novel The Executioners by John D. MacDonald, the film starred Gregory Peck as an attorney named Sam Bowden, while Robert Mitchum played an ex-con, Max Cady, who is stalking Bowden and his family.
Scorsese then remade the movie in 1991 with Nick Nolte as Sam Bowden and Robert De Niro as Max Cady. De Niro was nominated for the Best Actor Academy Award for his performance, while Juliette Lewis was nominated for Best Supporting Actress.
It was announced in November 2023 that Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg are executive producing a new television series that will serve as a re-imagining of Cape Fear.
Now, per Deadline, Bardem has signed on to play the Max Cady role in the show. He will also serve as an executive producer.
What else do we know about the Cape Fear television series?
“In the 10-episode series, described as a tense, Hitchcockian thriller and an examination of America’s obsession with true crime in the 21st century, a storm is coming for happily married attorneys Amanda and Steve Bowden when Max Cady (played by Bardem), a notorious killer from their past, gets out of prison,” the synopsis reads.
Nick Antosca created the series and also serves as an executive producer alongside Darryl Frank and Justin Falvey. No other casting information beyond Bardem is available at this time. A premiere date has not yet been set.
Bardem won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in 2007’s No Country for Old Men. He recently played Stilgar in 2024’s Dune: Part Two, while he has a voice role in Netflix’s upcoming Spellbound movie and will soon be seen playing a character named Ruben in F1, which releases in June 2025.