Creator David O'Leary described the History series to ET as 'X-Files in the time of Mad Men.'
Aidan Gillen has a new role.
The 50-year-old actor has transitioned from causing trouble as Littlefinger on Game of Thrones to trying to explain the unexplainable as Dr. J. Allen Hynek on History’s Project Blue Book.
The network dropped the first trailer for the new series ahead of Comic-Con on Wednesday (the show will be holding a panel on Saturday), and from the looks of it, Project Blue Book might just be the UFO drama we’ve all been looking for.
“The whole forest smelled like death. And then, we saw that thing. As God as my witness, it was not of this world,” a woman warns in the trailer, giving a sneak peek at the UFO investigations fans can expect from the series.
Project Blue Book, based on real top-secret U.S. Air Force-sponsored investigations into UFO-related phenomena in the ‘50s and ‘60s, will chronicle those cases, led by Gillen as Hynek, a college professor recruited by the Air Force.
Vampire Diaries alum Michael Malarkey plays his skeptical partner, Captain Michael Quinn, while Laura Mennell, Ksenia Solo, Michael Harney and Neal McDonough also star in the series from A+E Studios and Compari Entertainment, a division of Robert Zemeckis’ ImageMovers.
Check out the trailer below:
If you’re thinking the series looks and feels a bit familiar -- you’re not wrong. During a set visit earlier this year, Project Blue Book creator David O’Leary told ET the inspiration behind the show was “X-Files in the time of Mad Men.”
And as for Gillen jumping into a seemingly vastly different role from the manipulative, conniving Littlefinger, according to O’Leary, the characters actually have one important thing in common: “the wheels are always turning.”
“He was a very curious person, and took what people said at face value,” Gillen added of Dr. Hynek, who was responsible for developing the “Close Encounter” classification system that inspired Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind before his death in 1986.
“[Project Blue Book is going to] bring [viewers] on a trip that is fantastical, that is rooted in fact and history,” he continued. “These characters are real and the world is a more interesting place on account of people like Hynek."
"It'll be fun and thoughtful. And there will be some flying saucers," Gillen promised.
Project Blue Book is set to premiere on History this winter.
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