Johannessen, who was the showrunner on the net’s top-rated Dexter last season, will join Howard Gordon and Alex Gansa’s CIA thriller, according to sources.
Showtime has ordered 12 episodes of Homeland, which stars Damian Lewis, Claire Danes and Mandy Patinkin.
Loosely based on the Israeli television series Prisoners of War, Danes plays a CIA agent investigating the circumstances involving the rescue of a U.S. soldier (Lewis) missing in Iraq and presumed dead. Patinkin co-stars as a veteran CIA Division Chief and her superior officer. The two begin to suspect the soldiers’ reappearance is part of an Al Qaeda plot and that he may be colluding to perpetrate an attack on U.S. soil.
In an earlier interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Showtime entertainment president David Nevins described Homeland as “a psychological thriller with a real ticking clock and real edge-of-your seat elements.”
Gordon, Gansa and Johannessen worked together on Fox’s 24; Johannessen joined the show in 2009 as a producer, rising to co-executive producer in 2010.