EXCLUSIVE: Lucy Punch has been tapped as the female lead in the FX drama pilot Powers. Based on the graphic novel by Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Avon Oeming, the project, written by Charles H. Eglee and to be directed by Michael Dinner, is a police procedural set in a world where superpowers are relatively common. It centers on two detectives, Christian Walker and Deena Pilgrim (Punch), in a Homicide department that deals with cases involving “powers” (people with superpowers).

Eglee, Dinner, David Engel and Brian Bendis are executive producing for Sony Pictures TV and FX Prods. Filming is slated for mid-summer in Chicago. This marks a return to series television for the British-born Punch, whose first major U.S. role was on the CBS comedy The Class. She has been busy in features lately, appearing in Dinner for Schmucks and Woody Allen’s You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger. Punch, repped by WME, the Schiff Co. and U.K’s United Agents, will next be seen in Sony’s comedy Bad Teacher, which opens this weekend.