Dakota Fanning to star in TNT's The Alienist

Dakota Fanning has been tapped to star in TNT’s The Alienist adaptation, the network announced at the Television Critics Association’s press tour on Saturday.

Based on Caleb Carr’s best-selling book of the same name, The Alienist is a psychological thriller set in the Gilded Age of New York City in 1896, during which a series of gruesome murders of boy prostitutes grips the city. Police commissioner Theodore Roosevelt then calls on criminal psychologist (a.k.a. Alienist) Dr. Laszlo Kreisler (Daniel Brühl) and newspaper reporter John Moore (Luke Evans) to conduct the investigation in secret.

They are aided by a ragtag crew, which includes Fanning (War of the Worlds, Twilight) as Sara Howard, a headstrong secretary on Roosevelt’s staff who is determined to become the first female police detective in New York City. The team uses emerging disciplines of psychology and forensic techniques to track down one of the city’s first serial killers.

The Alienist is slated to premiere in late 2017 on TNT.