Skip to main content

Jordan Peele is working on a horror series about Jim Crow America for HBO

Jordan Peele is working on a horror series about Jim Crow America for HBO

/

Based off of Matt Ruff’s 2016 novel, Lovecraft Country

Share this story

Photo by Justin Lubin / Universal Studios

Fresh off of his breakout horror film Get Out, Jordan Peele seems to have found his next project: an adaptation of Matt Ruff’s 2016 horror novel Lovecraft Country. HBO has given the project a direct-to-series order, which is designed as an anthology horror series that “reclaims genre storytelling from the African-American perspective,” according to Deadline.

Published last year, Ruff’s novel is set in the 1950s, and follows a 22-year-old black Army veteran named Atticus Turner, who is in search of his missing father. Along with his uncle George and friend Letitia, he drives across the country to Massachusetts, where he discovers his father captured by a secret society known as the Order of the Ancient Dawn. Over the course of the book, Turner and his companions not only face unimaginable cosmic horrors that haunt America, but also racism from their white neighbors. The novel was on our best books of 2016 list.

Image: Harper Books

Get Out is a tense horror-thriller that directly addressed white privilege and inequality. In an interview with The Verge in March, Peele explained that he wanted to use the story to help change minds, saying that his next projects would be social thrillers. Lovecraft Country feels like the perfect to follow in that regard, examining the challenges that African-Americans faced at the hight of Jim Crow America, while also skewering many of the tropes and horror conventions laid down by H.P. Lovecraft.

Peele will act as an executive producer for the show, and is partnering with J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot and Warner Bros. Television. Underground showrunner Misha Green will write the pilot and act as showrunner. Earlier this month, Peele signed a major first-look deal with Universal Pictures for his next film project. It’s not clear when HBO expects to debut Lovecraft Country.