Paramount Network Releases New Trailer For Waco

It's blue skies, open fields, and an armed standoff in the new trailer for Paramount Network's Waco.

We've already seen our first look of Taylor Kitsch in the role of David Koresh in the upcoming six-part miniseries on the Paramount Network. With this trailer, we're getting a look at the rest of the cast, as well as some dramatic, intense context.

Related to another ongoing real-world scandal involving the sexual assaults of Harvey Weinstein, the trailer bears no mention of the involvement of Weinstein Television, which produced the series.

In the series, the FBI and ATF siege of the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas that riveted the nation in 1993 is being revisited as an avoidable tragedy, written by the filmmaker John Erick Dowdle and Drew Dowdle. John Dowdle is also directing four of the six episodes. Two episodes will be directed by Dennie Gordon, who has a voluminous background in directing television.

Examined in retrospect, the siege, which resulted in the deaths of 86 people (including Koresh), was a failure of law enforcement and a travesty of press manipulation after-the-fact, escalating an avoidable conflict into fatal disaster. Two years after the siege, a terrorist attacked a federal building in Oklahoma City with an improvised explosive, citing the government's aggression during the Waco siege as a motivation for the attack.

Previously, the Dowdles worked together on the horror films The Poughkeepsie Tapes, Quarantine, No Escape, and As Above, So Below, scripting collaboratively while John directed.

The series is drawing on material from two separate biographies, both written by people involved in the siege on opposing sides. The first, A Place Called Waco, was written by Branch Davidian David Thibodeau, a survivor of the lethal fire that ended the siege. The second, Stalling for Time: My Life as an FBI Hostage Negotiator, was written by Gary Noesner, a crisis negotiator with the FBI.

In addition to Kitsch in the lead role, Waco's cast includes Michael Shannon as Gary Noesner, Melissa Benoist as Rachel Koresh, Rory Culkin as David Thibodeau, and also Julia Garner, Andrea Riseborough, John Leguizamo, Shea Wigham, and Paul Sparks.

Waco will premiere on January 24 on Paramount Network, formerly known as Spike TV.