Earlier this year, Universal Cable Productions announced a development deal with John Carpenter, which will see the horror master executive produce scripted programming with UCP for the NBCUniversal Cable Entertainment portfolio, as well as for external networks and streaming services, along with his producing partner, Sandy King.
UCP and Carpenter are currently in development on “Tales for a Halloween Night” for SYFY. The series is based on Carpenter’s award-winning graphic novel anthology of stories where he brings together storytellers from the worlds of movies, novels, and comics for a collection of horror stories featuring graveyards, sunken ships, creepy crawlers and ghosts.
Speaking with Rue Morgue, Sandy King has confirmed that Carpenter will sit in the director’s chair for “Tales for a Halloween Night,” *at least* directing the pilot!
“He would direct the pilot, at least,” King told the site. “And then we’ll hopefully bring on some great horror directors—and just great directors—so that it’ll be a high-end show. We want anything that has our brand associated with it to be a satisfying experience for readers, watchers, whatever we’re doing.”
King also noted that the TV series won’t simply adapt the comic books.
“The idea behind the books is that you can have an evening of reading short scary stories, none of which are alike, and they’re all the different faces of horror. There are ghost stories, there are sea-monster stories, there are cursed rings; there’s intellectual horror and bugs, and all sorts of things,” she explained. “So the idea behind the series is to not just barf back the books and do the same things and say, ‘Here’s the books in TV form.’ We want to give you that same feeling of seeing all the facets of horror.”
Be sure to head over to Rue Morgue to read the full chat.
