The series stars an ensemble cast featuring Jeff Daniels, Tahar Rahim, Wrenn Schmidt, Bill Camp, Louis Cancelmi, Virginia Kull, Ella Rae Peck, Sullivan Jones, Michael Stuhlbarg, and Peter Sarsgaard.

The Looming Tower traces the "rising threat of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda in the late 1990s and how the rivalry between the FBI and CIA during that time may have inadvertently contributed to the 9/11 attacks.

It follows members of the I-49 Squad in New York and Alec Station in Washington, D.C., the counter-terrorism divisions of the FBI and CIA, respectively, as they travel the world fighting for ownership of information while seemingly working toward the same goal – trying to prevent an imminent attack on U.S.

"[1] The project emanated from Ali Soufan and Lawrence Wright's realization that both of them were fielding offers from various studios and production companies regarding the rights to their books about the lead-up to the September 11 terrorist attacks.

However, during their meeting with Hulu they were offered a straight-to-series order, an abbreviated development process, a promise not to cave under pressure from the federal agencies portrayed in the series, and the largest financial commitment of any service or network they had previously met with.

[6] In September 2016, Hulu ordered The Looming Tower to series from Legendary Television with executive producers including Alex Gibney, Dan Futterman, and Lawrence Wright.

[8] Ultimately, five different directors were chosen to helm the series' ten episodes: Zisk, Michael Slovis, John Dahl, Ali Selim and Alex Gibney.

Early on in the development process, Zisk and Gibney went on several international location scouting missions, in order to give their fellow directors options to pick from for filming.

[12] Also announced that month were the castings of Sullivan Jones, Virginia Kull, Louis Cancelmi, Peter Sarsgaard, and Wrenn Schmidt and Ella Rae Peck as series regulars.

The city possessed the "visual variety" that the producers were seeking, and doubled for various places including Nairobi, Tanzania, England, Albania, and Las Vegas, Nevada.

During the design period, a set dresser shared photos of his tour in Afghanistan and an art coordinator's daughter dove into the newspaper archives in Nairobi to help re-create the bombing site of the 1998 embassy attacks.

Following the screening, journalist David Ignatius moderated a question-and-answer session with Jeff Daniels, Tahar Rahim, Peter Sarsgaard, Wrenn Schmidt, Dan Futterman, Alex Gibney, Lawrence Wright, and Ali Soufan.

The website's critical consensus reads, "Well-acted and powerfully written, The Looming Tower delivers gripping counter-terrorism drama rendered even more soberingly effective through its roots in real-life events.

[34] The Washington Post's Hank Stuever praised the series for its "coolly fascinating pace and tenor" and commented that "Tahar Rahim gives a smart and sincere performance as Ali Soufan, a Muslim American agent on O'Neill's squad.

"[35] The Hollywood Reporter's Daniel Fienberg offered the series praise saying, "The Looming Tower demands a hasty combination of faith in the storytellers and half-forgotten knowledge of the history.

"[38] In a more negative review, Collider's Chris Cabin criticized the series calling it "a middling act of didacticism, an attempt to pass off facts as insight and characters as little more than the sum of their intellect.