Tahar Rahim has been tapped as one of the two leads in Hulu’s high-profile The Looming Tower, a straight-to-series drama based on Lawrence Wright’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 9/11 exposé, from Oscar-nominated Dan Futterman (Foxcatcher), Oscar- and Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney (Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief) and Legendary Television.

The Looming Tower traces the rising threat of Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda, and takes a controversial look at how the rivalry between the CIA and FBI may have inadvertently set the stage for the tragedy of 9/11 and the war in Iraq. It centers on Ali Soufan (Rahim) and John O’Neill. Ali Soufan a young FBI agent on John O’Neill’s I-49 anti-terrorism squad who quickly ascends to O’Neill’s protégé due to his brilliance, as well as his fluency in Arabic and Islam. Ali is outraged by the perversion of his religion by enemies of the United States and uses every tool at his disposal, including going undercover in extremists’ gathering spaces, in order to prevent catastrophes.

Futterman, Gibney and Wright will executive produce the series, eyed for a 2017 premiere.

Rahim, repped by UTA, can next be seen in Garth Davis’ upcoming epic, Mary Magdalene, starring as Judas, alongside Joaquin Phoenix, Rooney Mara and Chiwetel Ejiofor.