Ernie Hudson has joined the cast of NBC's Quantum Leap reboot pilot, appearing in a starring role alongside Raymond Lee. Per Deadline, the pilot acknowledges the original Quantum Leap but is set 30 years since Scott Bakula's Dr. Sam Beckett vanished after stepping into the Quantum Leap accelerator. There's no indication at this time that Bakula will be involved in the pilot, but the door is open for his character to appear at some point if the show is ordered to series.
Lee serves as the reboot's successor of sorts to Dr. Beckett. He plays Dr. Ben Seong, a world-renowned physicist working on a time-travel project known as Quantum Leap who gets stuck in the late 1980s with amnesia after using the technology. We can only imagine where he'll be leaping next in future episodes if NBC moves forward with the series.
Hudson, who was back on the big screen last year to reprise his role as Winston Zeddemore in Ghostbusters: Afterlife, will be playing Herbert "Magic" Williams. The character is described as "a Vietnam veteran and head of the time travel project at Quantum Leap. Using a bit of politicking and his military know-how to keep the Pentagon at bay, Magic buys the team some time to rescue Ben but expects answers once he’s back."
The logline for the pilot reads:
"The follow-up series is set in present time. It’s been 30 years since Dr. Sam Beckett (Scott Bakula) stepped into the Quantum Leap accelerator and vanished. Now a new team has been assembled to restart the project in the hopes of understanding the mysteries behind the machine and the man who created it."
Universal Television is producing the pilot. Helen Shaver is directing. Steven Lilien and Bryan Wynbrandt wrote the reboot and will serve as executive producers alongside Martin Gero, Quantum Leap creator/EP Don Bellisario, and EP/co-narrator Deborah Pratt. Lilien and Wynbrandt are exec producing for I Have an Idea! Entertainment with Bellisario for Belisarius Productions and Geno for Quinn's House Productions.
Scott Bakula Might Return as Dr. Sam Beckett in the Reboot, But Nothing Is Confirmed
Scott Bakula starred in the original Quantum Leap with the late Dean Stockwell as his co-star. Controversially, the five-season series ended without any real resolution, leaving Dr. Beckett stranded in space and time. Viewers of the series finale were met with a title card that simply explained that Sam never found his way back home, which disappointed many who'd been hoping for a bigger payoff to cap off the story.
If the reboot moves forward, we just might see Dr. Beckett come back home, or at least find out some of what he's been up to for the past thirty years. Last year, Bakula had said that there were talks going on behind the scenes about a Quantum Leap reboot, which we now know has been confirmed. While nothing is confirmed, he suggested that he'd be open to return.
"We all know that Sam's still out there, and I always tell people that should be comforting - that he's still out there fixing things that once went wrong," Bakula said.