The last few days have seen a flurry of activity surrounding the pilot for FX’s upcoming series Powers, based on the comic book by Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Avon Oeming. Three of the main cast members were announced in the last week by a variety of sources.

Jason Patric (Lost Boys, Speed 2) has been cast as lead character Detective Christian Walker. Joining him will be Lucy Punch (Bad Teacher, Dinner for Schmucks) as Walker’s new partner, Deena Pilgrim. Finally, it was announced yesterday that Carly Foulkes (the girl from those T-Mobile commercials) has been cast as Retro Girl, one of the superheroes in the Powers universe, and also the victim in the series’ first investigation.

If you’re not familiar with Powers, it is a comic book that started in 2000 from Image Comics, and is currently being released through Marvel’s Icon imprint. It follows Detective Walker and Pilgrim as they solve cases involving super-powered individuals. The series is one of the best comics of the last decade (or so) and is one of the books that put Bendis on the map as a comic book writer and got him the big work he does for Marvel these days.

The cast has got me even more excited to see how this show works out. I think we all know Patric from a variety of work he has done in the past, some of it good and some of it not so good. In my opinion, he skews a little older than I may have thought of Walker from the comic, but that’s not the worst thing in the world. He also doesn’t have the big, Superman-like physique that Walker has in the books, but then again, no real person could match the way the character is drawn. I think he can get the stoicism of the character across and I can see him doing a decent job with it.

Lucy Punch is someone who I have not seen in a great many things, but that hasn’t caused me to form much of an opinion one way or the other about her. From what I have seen, I think she’ll be able to get the spunk and fire of Pilgrim across. I’ll be curious to see how faithful they are to the character’s design, but it isn’t like they have to get her hair cut the exact same way it is in the comic. It’s more important that they immediately get the partnership between Walker and Pilgrim right, as that will be the heart of the show.

And quite frankly I’m just in love (or at least lust) with Carly Foulkes. In terms of the show, I am most curious to see how she is used in it. I’m going on pure speculation here, but I’m guessing that the first season is going to focus just on the Retro Girl case, and that Foulkes will be used largely in flashbacks throughout the season. Series like AMC’s The Killing and FX’s own Damages are recent examples of shows that have used the one case per series model to tell compelling stories and my assumption is that Powers will follow this formula. Filming hasn’t started yet, so we’re still a ways off from seeing any actual footage, but I’m a bit more excited to see this now that we have an idea of who will be in it.

Any Powers fans out there more excited? Less excited? Let us know what you think of this casting news.

[Source: Deadline | Deadline | CBR]