Cannes, France— Catalyst Global Media, the multifaceted television and film production company led by Charlotte Walls and Al Hardiman, has partnered with John Woo (Mission Impossible II, Face/Off, Paycheck) and his Los Angeles team to produce a new original scripted television series titled Cognition.

Cognition is a neo-noir crime thriller covering two serial killer investigations set in two very stylistically contrasting worlds — the vast and desolate lands of America’s declining mid-west, and the thriving and overpopulated streets of the Far East.

The series is centered around Travis Augustine, an American ex-detective who has travelled to the Far East for a cutting-edge, untested medical procedure to cure his cancer.

Cognition is an original television idea created by Alex Garcia Lopez, director of cult British TV shows Utopia and Misfits. Garcia Lopez is writing and will direct the series, which begins production in 2016.

John Woo will executive produce the 8 x 60’ TV series, alongside his long-term producing partner Terence Chang and Senior Vice President, Lori Tilkin. Having forged a successful career as a film director in Hong Kong since the early 1970s, Woo made his name in Hollywood with 1989’s The Killer and since then has worked almost exclusively in the U.S.

Additional projects currently underway at Catalyst include the sci-fi thriller Genus, which is being adapted by Mike Carey (She Who Brings Gifts). Based on the acclaimed novel of the same name by Jonathan Trigell (writer of “Boy A,” dramatized by Film Four and The Weinstein Co. and recipient of four BAFTA Awards), Genus is a gripping and action-packed sci-fi thriller set in a bleak and dangerous future of genetic selection.