TV
Garret Dillahunt and More Join Bruce Campbell in Satanic Panic Series “Hysteria!” from Peacock
Peacock’s coming-of-age thriller “Hysteria!” is set to tackle the era of Satanic Panic, and Deadline reports that Garret Dillahunt (The Last House on the Left) has signed on.
Nolan North (Pretty Little Liars), Elijah Richardson (Fantasy Football), Milly Shapiro (Hereditary), Allison Scagliotti (Warehouse 13) and Jessica Treska (Alex & Me) have also been set for recurring roles, alongside the previously announced Bruce Campbell, Julie Bowen, Anna Camp, Emjay Anthony, Chiara Aurelia, Kezii Curtis, and Nikki Hahn.
Written and executive produced by Matthew Scott Kane (Stitchers) and David Goodman (The Orville), “Hysteria!” explores America’s dark history of mass hysteria through the shocking story of the teenage Satanic Panic. The series follows a group of 1980s high school misfits as they exploit the growing hysteria around teen occult activity.
Kong: Skull Island director Jordan Vogt-Roberts will helm the premiere episode.
Here’s the full synopsis: “When a beloved varsity quarterback disappears during the “Satanic Panic” of the late 1980s, a struggling high school heavy metal band of outcasts realize they can capitalize on the town’s sudden interest in the occult by building a reputation as a Satanic metal band, until a bizarre series of murders, kidnappings, and reported “supernatural activity” triggers a leather-studded witch hunt that leads directly back to them.”
John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein (Dungeons & Dragons, Game Night) executive produce. Chris Bender and Jake Weiner (Under the Silver Lake) exec produce for Good Fear.
“This nail-biting thriller dives into a mass moral panic and all the fears, desires, anger, and dread that led to these dark days,” said Beatrice Springborn, President, UCP. “Matthew’s script is original, intriguing and perfectly captures the frenetic energy of the Satanic Panic. We can’t wait for audiences to experience the show on Peacock.”
Published in 2019, Stephen King‘s novel The Institute is getting a TV series adaptation from MGM+, with Deadline reporting today that the project has been given a series order.
Ben Barnes (Shadow and Bone) and Mary-Louise Parker (Weeds) will star.
The Institute comes from director/executive producer Jack Bender (Lost, Mr. Mercedes), writer/executive producer Benjamin Cavell (Justified, The Stand) and MGM+ Studios.
In the eight-episode series, “When 12-year-old genius Luke Ellis is kidnapped, he awakens at The Institute, a facility full of children who all got there the same way he did, and who are all possessed of unusual abilities. In a nearby town, haunted former police officer Tim Jamieson (Barnes) has come looking to start a new life, but the peace and quiet won’t last, as his story and Luke’s are destined to collide.” The website notes that Parker will play “Ms. Sigsby, the charming but iron-willed director of the Institute and a true believer in its awful mission.”
“I’m delighted and excited at the prospect of The Institute, with its high-intensity suspense, being filmed as a series,” King said. “The combination of Jack Bender and Ben Cavell guarantees that the results will be terrific.”
“We are thrilled to have the opportunity to work again with Stephen King. And The Institute, based on his critically acclaimed novel, is an exciting addition to the MGM+ original series slate,” said Michael Wright, head of MGM+. “There is no creative team I would trust more to bring the book to life than Jack and Ben, whose creative vision and love of Mr. King’s voice, will bring this thought-provoking and gut-wrenching story to life, in the engaging, cinematic, and thrilling style MGM+ viewers expect.”
Here’s the novel’s full synopsis, via Amazon:
As psychically terrifying as Firestarter, and with the spectacular kid power of It, The Institute is Stephen King’s gut-wrenchingly dramatic story of good vs. evil in a world where the good guys don’t always win.
In the middle of the night, in a house on a quiet street in suburban Minneapolis, intruders silently murder Luke Ellis’s parents and load him into a black SUV. The operation takes less than two minutes. Luke will wake up at The Institute, in a room that looks just like his own, except there’s no window. And outside his door are other doors, behind which are other kids with special talents—telekinesis and telepathy—who got to this place the same way Luke did: Kalisha, Nick, George, Iris, and ten-year-old Avery Dixon. They are all in Front Half. Others, Luke learns, graduated to Back Half, “like the roach motel,” Kalisha says. “You check in, but you don’t check out.”
In this most sinister of institutions, the director, Mrs. Sigsby, and her staff are ruthlessly dedicated to extracting from these children the force of their extranormal gifts. There are no scruples here. If you go along, you get tokens for the vending machines. If you don’t, punishment is brutal. As each new victim disappears to Back Half, Luke becomes more and more desperate to get out and get help. But no one has ever escaped from the Institute.
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