Skip to main content

Former 'Walking Dead' showrunner Glen Mazzara is making a TV series based on 'The Omen'

Former 'Walking Dead' showrunner Glen Mazzara is making a TV series based on 'The Omen'

Share this story

The Omen, one of the most enduring supernatural horror films of the 1970s, is coming to the Lifetime TV network at the hands of former Walking Dead showrunner Glen Mazzara. The Hollywood Reporter writes that Lifetime has ordered six episodes of a series about an adult version of Damien Thorn, the young antichrist at the center of the original movie. The series is being written and produced by Mazzara and is set to air in 2015; the first news of the series leaked in May.

Thorn is apparently being reimagined as "a dark, romantic antihero" who is haunted by his past and must face his true destiny over the course of the series. Dark antiheroes are at this point more or less required for a new series, but based on this description, he'll be a slightly more Byronic take on the archetype than usual. On Lifetime, the show will join a stable that already includes supernatural series Witches of East End and dystopian drama The Lottery — thematically more like Children of Men than Shirley Jackson's famous short story. Meanwhile, Mazzara (who ran The Walking Dead until leaving abruptly in late 2012) is said to be writing a prequel to another horror staple: last year, we heard tentatively that he was in talks for The Overlook Hotel, a film preceding the events of Stephen King's The Shining.

The original Omen was released in 1976, three years after The Exorcist and eight after Rosemary's Baby. Its now widely-parodied plot involves a couple who unknowingly adopted an infant antichrist, who causes havoc in his new family as he grows up. It was followed by three well-spaced sequels, Damien: Omen II, Omen III: The Final Conflict, and Omen IV: The Awakening, which were released between 1978 and 1991. 2006 saw a remake released to mixed reviews, and it's not clear entirely what elements will be taken from various parts of the canon for the TV series. Regardless of the answer, it seems likely to be a very different beast than the highly faithful remake — if anything, it seems possible it will retcon Damien into a more sympathetic character than he appears in the original film.