Breaking News: TNT Greenlights THE LIBRARIANS

What began as a made-for-TV movie on TNT in 2004 with The Librarian: Quest for the Spear turned into a TV movie franchise that spawned The Librarian: Return to King Solomon’s Mines in 2006 and The Librarian: Curse of the Judas Chalice in 2008 and is now becoming a new weekly series on the cable network called The Librarians. All three movies starred Falling Skies and ER actor Noah Wyle in the lead role of Flynn Carsen.

This new series will star Rebecca Romijn (X-Men franchise and King & Maxwell) with Wyle serving as executive producer and reprising his role of Flynn in a recurring capacity. The Librarians will center on an ancient organization hidden beneath the Metropolitan Public Library dedicated to protecting an unknowing world from the secret, magical reality hidden all around. This group (more on the cast below) solves impossible mysteries, fights supernatural threats and recovers powerful artifacts from around the world.

For the past 10 years, Flynn Carsen (Wyle) has served as the Librarian. Prior to taking the job, he was a bookish nerd with 22 academic degrees and absolutely no social skills. As Librarian, however, he managed to use his extraordinary knowledge, successfully recovering ancient artifacts and, in the process, saving the world from unspeakable evil on more than one occasion. Over the last decade he’s gone from bookworm to dashing swashbuckler, one of the secret heroes of the hidden world.

As great as Flynn is, the job of Librarian has become more than one person can handle. To aid him in his duties, the Library has recruited four people from around the world, including Eve Baird (Romijn), a highly skilled counter-terrorism agent who is responsible for protecting the group and keeping them all alive; Jake Stone (Christian Kane from Leverage), an Oklahoma oil worker with an IQ of 190 and an encyclopedic knowledge of art history; Cassandra (Lindy Booth from October Road and the made-for-TV movie Twelve Trees of Christmas), a quirky young woman with the special gift of auditory and sensory hallucinations linked to memory retrieval, known as synesthesia; and Ezekiel Jones (John Kim from the Australian series Neighbours), a master of new technologies and aficionado of old classic crimes who enjoys playing the role of international man of mystery.

Overseeing the new team of Librarians is the somewhat cantankerous Jenkins (veteran actor John Larroquette), an expert in ancient lore who has been working out of the Library’s branch office for longer than anyone knows. Together, they must tangle with many adversaries, chief of whom is the Serpent Brotherhood, an ancient cult led by the mysterious immortal Dulaque (Matt Frewer from Orphan Black). Also returning from the movie franchise are Emmy winners Bob Newhart and Jane Curtin.

TNT has ordered 10 episodes of The Librarians with plans to launch the series in late 2014.