HARLAN COBEN'S SHELTER, "El Chico Nuevo"

HARLAN COBEN'S SHELTER, "El Chico Nuevo"

Pilot

MGM/Amazon

Executive Producers: Harlan Coben, Ed Decter

Writer: Ed Decter

Director: TBD

Casting Directors: Alyson Silverberg and Jonathan Clay Harris

Casting Associate: Ally Bader

Shoot Dates: Approx. mid-August to early Sep.

Location: New Jersey (Tri-state area)


Seeking:

[ MICKEY BOLITAR ]
Character portrayed as he/him. Latinx or Latinx/Mixed Race.  Bi-racial, his father is Jewish and his mother is Latinx. 16 years old, and already 6’4”. Mickey Bolitar has the calm confidence of a gifted athlete who doesn’t feel the need to trash talk.  His life has recently been thrown upside down and twisted inside out: His father died suddenly right in front of him, throwing his mom into a tailspin and landing her in rehab. Mickey was sent to live with his Aunt Leah, his father’s estranged sister that Mickey has, to put it mildly, a strained relationship with. Add on having to start at a new high school as a junior after spending his life being home-schooled by his globetrotting parents – yeah, it’s a lot for a sixteen-year-old. At least his new school has a basketball team. But a lot of things in his new hometown in New Jersey aren’t adding up: Mystery Number One: his new friend Ashley disappears under extremely curious circumstances. Mystery Number Two: A local madwoman known as "The Bat Lady" yells to Mickey that his father is still alive… SERIES LEAD SPEAKS FLUENT SPANISH.  PLAYS BASKETBALL VERY WELL.


Storyline: 16-year-old MICKEY BOLITAR is the new kid at Livingston High School in New Jersey, and he's there on a basketball scholarship.  A recent car accident killed his father (maybe) and hospitalized his mother, and Mickey is temporarily (maybe) living with his Aunt Leah.  Intent on trying out for the basketball team (like any normal kid who just happens to be six-foot-four), Mickey is suddenly confronted by one oddity after another.  His family legacy includes other skills besides basketball, like a knack for discreet (sometimes confrontational) investigative work, and Mickey acts like a true Bolitar when the oddities mount up a little too high to be ignored: he seeks out the hidden truth, no matter what it costs him...