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Fox’s Poster for Its New Cop Show The Chicago Code Puts Us in a Sean Connery Mood

Shawn Ryan’s new Fox drama The Chicago Code doesn’t debut until February, but Fox has already started its promotional campaign for the new show. Look for lots of billboards to start popping up in big cities, as well as a slew of spots this Sunday during the network’s football coverage. Vulture is debuting the new poster for Code (see above), which features a menacing shot of Delroy Lindo (as corrupt alderman Ronin Gibbons) towering over the cops who’ll be trying to bring him down. If the key art feels vaguely familiar, you might be a fan of a certain classic Chicago-based gangster movie from the late eighties.

There are some definite similarities between Fox’s new Code poster and the one-sheet for The Untouchables — the bad guy looming, the crusaders below — and that’s probably okay with Ryan and Fox. Ever since the show was first picked up to series last spring, they’ve been working to make sure viewers have the right perception of it.

Originally announced as Ride Along, the title was changed a few months back — a move that Ryan told HitFix critic Alan Sepinwall was quite deliberate. “We wanted something with Chicago in the title and something that implied an experience of more than just another typical cop show,” he said. But the showrunner clearly wants to avoid too many comparisons to The Untouchables (and probably HBO’s fall mob hit Boardwalk Empire): As Sepinwall noted, when a fan asked Ryan via Twitter why they didn’t just name the show The Chicago Way, he responded that “would’ve been cribbing from my friend, David Mamet.” The Chicago Code debuts February 7.

Fox’s Poster for Its New Cop Show The Chicago Code Puts Us in a Sean Connery Mood