CLOAK & DAGGER Casts Aubrey Joseph & Olivia Holt as Leads

Get ready for more of Marvel Cinematic Universe on television.

Deadline has revealed that the upcoming Freeform (formerly ABC Family) series Cloak and Dagger, based on the Marvel Comics superheroes, has cast Aubrey Joseph and Olivia Holt in the lead roles of Tyrone Johnson and Tandy Bowen.

According to the article, Cloak and Dagger "follows the interracial romance between Tandy Bowen (Holt) and Tyrone Johnson (Joseph), who come from starkly different backgrounds, each growing up with a secret they never dared share with another soul. Tandy can emit light daggers and Tyrone has the ability to engulf others in darkness. They quickly learn they are better together than apart — but their feelings for each other make their already complicated world even more challenging."

"The characters of Tandy and Tyrone have always stood out to me ever since I first met them in the pages of Marvel Comics when I was a boy," said Cloak & Dagger executive producer/showrunner Joe Pokaski.  "When Olivia and Aubrey read for the roles, these characters leapt off the page.  We’re so excited to see what these talented young actors bring to the Marvel Universe."

"Marvel is delighted to have found our Cloak & Dagger," said Jeph Loeb, Head of Marvel Television and Executive Producer.  "Olivia Holt and Aubrey Joseph encompass the true essence of the characters and we are excited for the audience to see them in these roles."

The character description for Cloak/Tyrone states "Young Tyrone Johnson wanted nothing more than to prove he was fearless.  But when everything he held close was taken away, life taught Tyrone to be afraid.   Now older and more sheltered, Tyrone closes himself off. But when he meets a girl named Tandy his life changes forever."

Joseph, appeared as Dwight Gooden Stone on the HBO miniseries The Night Of and in the 2015 Liam Neeson film Run All Night.  He also appeared in the TV movie Death Pact and on an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.

As for Dagger/Tandy, she is described as "Once a privileged little girl, Tandy Bowen watched as her family was destroyed by a disastrous storm that uprooted her life.  Now in her late teens, an unexpected encounter with a boy named Tyrone sparks a life changing event."  

Holt, 19, starred as Kim in the Disney XD series Kickin' It and previously voiced Spider-Girl/Petra Parker on the animated series Ultimate Spider-Man.  She also appeared in the film Tinker Bell and the Legend of the NeverBeast and on episodes of The Evermoor Chronicles, Dog with a Blog, and Shake It Up.

Created in 1982 by Bill Mantlo and Ed Hannigan, Cloak and Dagger first appeared in Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man #64 as pair of runaways who met in New York City. Tyrone was a 17-year-old boy from Boston, Massachusetts with a debilitating stutter who ran away to New York City when his speech impediment prevented him from stopping his friend from being shot by police, who mistakenly believed he had just robbed a store.  Tandy was a 16-year-old girl from a privileged upbringing in Shaker Heights, Ohio, who ran away because her multi-millionaire supermodel mother was too busy with her career and social life to spend time with her daughter.  When they met, Tyrone considered stealing Tandy's purse, but before he could, a thief stole the purse and Tyrone retrieved it for her. Afterwards, they had dinner and became fast friends.

After Tandy naïvely accepted an offer of shelter from some strange men, Tyrone went along to protect her.  The two teens were soon delivered to criminal chemist Simon Marshall, who was developing a new synthetic heroin for Silvermane and the Maggia, testing it on runaway teens with fatal results.  Johnson and Bowen somehow survived injections of the drug, and they fled.  During their escape, the drug turned them into superpowered beings, later retconned that they were both actually mutants and that the drug had simply awakened their latent abilities.  Tyrone found himself engulfed in darkness and seized by a strange hunger which eased in the presence of Tandy glowing with a brilliant light.  Trying to hide his newly shadowy appearance in a makeshift cloak, Tyrone began absorbing Marshall's thugs into his darkness while Tandy struck them down with daggers of light.  The two teens dubbed themselves "Cloak & Dagger" and declared war on drug crime in combating drug-dealers and helping runaway children.

This will be the first time the characters have appeared in live-action, although they were on the animated series Ultimate Spider-Man, with Cloak voiced by Phil LaMarr and Dagger voiced by Ashley Eckstein.

Cloak and Dagger is expected to debut on Freeform sometime in 2018.