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HBO orders horror anthology Lovecraft Country to series - Jordan Peele & Misha Green

C

Cornballer

Member
- ‘Get Out’s Jordan Peele Teams With WBTV, HBO & Bad Robot For ‘Lovecraft Country’ Drama Series; Misha Green Writing
Get Out writer-director Jordan Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions is teaming with J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot and Warner Bros Television on Lovecraft Country, a one-hour drama that has been given a straight-to-series order by HBO. The pilot will be written by Underground executive producer/writer Misha Green. Peele will be exec producer along with Green, Abrams and Ben Stephenson. Green will also be showrunner.

There is connective tissue to Peele’s breakout genre feature Get Out, which brought a Black Lives Matter theme to the horror genre. Lovecraft Country focuses on 25-year-old Atticus Black. After his father goes missing, Black joins up with his friend Letitia and his Uncle George to embark on a road trip across 1950s Jim Crow America to find him. This begins a struggle to survive and overcome both the racist terrors of white America and the malevolent spirits that could be ripped from a Lovecraft paperback. The goal is an anthological horror series that reclaims genre storytelling from the African-American perspective.

Peele brought the book to Bad Robot and enlisted Green.

“When I first read Lovecraft Country I knew it had the potential to be unlike anything else on television,” Green said. “Jordan, JJ, Bad Robot, Warner Bros and HBO are all in the business of pushing the limits when it comes to storytelling, and I am beyond thrilled to be working with them on this project.”
Click to expand...
 
H

HStallion

Now what's the next step in your master plan?
As a fan of Lovecraft, Peele and HBO this is amazing sounding. Seems Lovecraft has finally started to really leak out into the mainstream as they're using his name. Between this show and the Lovecraft anthology series Legendary is working on we're getting a lot of series heavily or directly based on his works and creations.
 
Grizzlyjin

Grizzlyjin

Supersonic, idiotic, disconnecting, not respecting, who would really ever wanna go and top that
Sounds really good. I'm all about this.

With Green moving on, things don't sound too rosy for Underground then, huh?
 
P

Plum

Member
Sounds amazing. If they can do the Lovecraft style justice without the, you know, racism, this could turn out to be something special.
 
D

Dusk Golem

A 21st Century Rockefeller
This sounds to have serious potential, I love the description and am legitmately excited for this. 100% on-board to watch this when it airs.

(I haven't read the book.)
 
N

Nivash

Member
I really like the spin they put on it by including the racism, only in reverse. One of the harder truths to swallow about Lovecraft's literature is that you can't just remove the racism from it because the racism improves it in a twisted way. Lovecraft's descriptions of any people and cultures who aren't basically white Anglosaxon Protestants make them sound almost as monstruous and hostile as anything else in the books. It helps set the stage for the kind of world where the cosmic horror aspect makes sense, as well as making the setting even more bleak and hopeless by suggesting that the world isn't really worth saving in the first place.

Flipping it on its head retains that aspect while making it both more palatable and more fair to actual history. I love it. It gives me hope that the showrunners know what they're doing and that they understand how Lovecraft goes beyond tentacled monsters with weird names.

EDIT: Somehow missed from the OP that it's based on a book. Must read. Then must watch.
 
J

.JayZii

Banned
Sounds great in concept.

I just hope they don't go with the caricatured, over-the-top "everybody's sprouting tentacles!" version of "Lovecraftian", and go with a more subtle unsettling creepy tone.
 
M

More_Badass

Member
Grabbed this book a few months back thanks to What Are You Reading threads

Everyone involved with this is absolutely perfect for the adaptation
 
Charles Brandon

Charles Brandon

Member
Sounds brilliant. I fucking love Lovecraft's tales although the irony of this having an African-American flavour is not lost on me, given that Lovecraft was a racist fuck.
 
T

The Boat

Member
giphy.gif
 
P

Platy

Member
Sounds awesome !

Also kinda hilarious to take Lovecraftian stuff as a metaphor for racism considering how HP had some pretty racist stuff
 
S

Sgt. Kabukiman

Banned
That sounds incredible. I need more Lovecraft in my life.
And I have no doubts that Peele will handle the horror elements perfectly as well as subvert the blatant racism present in some of Lovecraft's works.
 
W

wrowa

Member
Based on the book by Matt Ruff? Haven't read it yet, but his past works were incredibly good, but never quite got the attention they deserved. Really happy
about this.
 
J

jack_package_200

Banned
For those who have read Lovecraft Country,
do lovecraftian-esque monsters make any kind of appearance or does the novel mainly focus on the existential cosmic horror/dread?
 
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