HBO to become an even darker place with new Gillian Flynn adaptation
HBO's Sharp Objects, based on Flynn's novel of the same name, previously aired on the streamer in 2018
Aux News Gillian Flynn
Time to pop a cold one, fans of terrible people, killer monologues, and very true-feeling fictional crime. At long last, one of the most fucked up, perfect triple-features imaginable is one step closer to reality. Following the success of 2014's Gone Girl and HBO’s 2018 Sharp Objects, beloved thriller author Gillian Flynn’s 2009 novel Dark Places is finally getting its fair shake. Everybody say, “Satanic panic!”
Okay, yes… There’s technically already a Dark Places movie that came out in 2015 starring Charlize Theron, Chloë Grace Moretz, and Nicholas Hoult. You’re not having déjà vu. But Flynn fans like to practice a little selective amnesia in regards to the Gilles Paquet-Brenner-directed film because it was, to put it frankly, bad. In The A.V. Club’s B- review, for example, we called it “the darkest Lifetime movie never made.”
Now, HBO is joining Disney+ and Netflix in a new practice that’s rapidly become a trend: taking a beloved book or series that got a terrible movie adaptation, and redoing it as a (hopefully) much better show. Disney+ did it with Percy Jackson And The Olympians and Netflix is hoping to repeat the magic with their upcoming live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender remake later this year.
According to Variety, Flynn will serve as co-creator, writer, and co-showrunner for HBO’s newest stab (sorry) at her novel. She’ll be joined by married couple Brett Johnson and Guerrin Gardner, who are credited as co-showrunner, co-creator, and writer, and co-creator and writer respectively. Johnson created Showtime’s Escape at Dannemora and has written for Ray Donovan, Mad Men, and more, while Gardner has acted and written for shorts like Chowchilla and Michael Peterson.
Dark Places is, unsurprisingly, a pretty dark tale. The show’s official logline reads:
Libby Day was seven when her mother and two sisters were murdered in the famous 1985 ‘Satan Sacrifice of Kinnakee, Kansas.’ She survived—and famously testified that her teenage brother, Ben, was the killer. Twenty-five years later, a pair of mother/daughter true crime ‘detectives’ locate a grownup Libby and pump her for details, believing that Ben is innocent. Libby, having spent her youth working the talk show circuit, hopes to once again turn a profit off her tragic history: She’ll reconnect with the players from that night and report her findings —for a fee. As Libby’s search takes her from shabby Missouri strip clubs to abandoned Oklahoma tourist traps, the unimaginable truth emerges, and Libby finds herself right back where she started—on the run from a killer.
No casting announcements as of yet, but—at least in the book—Libby is as nuanced and sticky a protagonist as Gone Girl’s Amy Dunne or Sharp Objects’ Camille Preaker, played expertly by Rosamund Pike and Amy Adams in the film and series respectively. Whoever takes her on has a huge task ahead of them.
23 Comments
“taking a beloved book or series that got a terrible movie adaptation, and redoing it as a (hopefully) much better show”The Dark is Rising is RIGHT THERE you guys!Also Imajica, someone please make a series out of that!
“taking a beloved book or series that got a terrible movie adaptation, and redoing it as a (hopefully) much better show” You forgot to mention HBO’s Harry Potter remake.
If it’s anything like Sharp Objects, hard pass. It’s incredibly rare for me to not finish a limited series, and there was a lot of talent involved, but that was the worst, most heavy handed, obvious garbage. My wife swears the book wasn’t too bad, but Jesus. Identified the killer 30 minutes into the first episode and definitely didn’t waver, since there were about four characters in the whole goddamn thing.
I had the same problem. Hinging everything on the killer’s ID is really tough anyway in the era of forensic fandom. Better to just tell a great story with characters that are compelling to spend time with. And maybe a little funny sometimes? The best dramas have a sense of humor and these kinds of things too often have all the color drained away. A little gallows humor goes a long way.
I thought it was OK. The ending definitely shocked me.
The only thing worse than Sharp Objects was The Outsider. When HBO stinks, they really stink.
Yeah, that was another series that I didn’t finish, but in a different way. I engaged with Sharp Objects and had to shut it off in disgust halfway through for being actively, robustly terrible. With the Outsider, I watched maybe an episode and a half and just never connected with it or bothered to watch more. I wasn’t necessarily calling it bad (although many do, and with more information than I had); it took me a while to really connect with the Wire before it became my favorite show of all time, but I stuck that one out because I was already an enormous David Simon fan.The odds of me ever actually trying to watch the Outsider are pretty small, but the odds of finishing Sharp Objects are zero.
Give me some of those backwoods heavy metal Paradise Lost vibes + some moody Dolores Claiborne action and we’ll have something.
What I remember about the Dark Places book was the constant description of Libby as someone short (she literally is able to hide or crawl somewhere because she’s short) and plain.
So Charlize was perfect casting for that role!
Maybe she came to the audition in her Monster makeup?
Is Linda Hunt too old?
So, you’re too much of a fucking asshole to accept that a tall person was cast as a short person?
Fuck you.
I was going to say she was described as a short redhead with huge cans. Flynn just kept bringing up how big those cans were. How even though she was short she was packing some heat up top.
Or, how about remaking a show based off a book series that already had a one or two season series that got fucked 6 ways from Sunday, like, The Dresden Files and Bitten. There was so much promise, because of the source material, but the showrunners said, “Nah, let’s do something different,” and went Gimp on them.Or, fix Michael Crichton’s Timeline. That movie gave a hard, dry fuck to the book.
“Or, how about remaking a show based off a book series that already had a one or two season series that got fucked 6 ways from Sunday, like, The Dresden Files and Bitten.”
Yeah, why doesn’t HBO just remake shows they had no involvement in and don’t have the rights to? What a great fucking idea from a non-moron.
You and he were… buddies… weren’t you?Need I say more? Need I say more.
Who’s gonna be Sanchez? Is Gillian going to play Dahgless herself? I’m confused.
You know what would make HBO a really dark place?
A big-budget reboot of Darkplace
https://www.channel4.com/programmes/garth-marenghis-darkplace
Yeah, that Dark Places movie with Charlize was terrible. It was an A24 film but even they must have realized it was kind of a stinker since they shuffled it right to VOD with barely a theatrical release, and it’s rightly forgotten about now (or most people probably aren’t even aware of its existence). Surprised that it got even as high as a B- grade from AV Club. I haven’t read the book, but I wouldn’t mind seeing someone else take a stab at this. Getting the Escape at Dannemora creator is a good sign, I finally watched that miniseries recently and it was much better than I expected.
“Time to pop a cold one, fans of terrible people, killer monologues, and very true-feeling fictional crime.”
Wow, imagine thinking that Gone Girl or Sharp Objects are “true-feeling”.
“because it was, to put it frankly, bad. In The A.V. Club’s B- review”
So, what it “frankly bad” or was it a B- movie?
This was my least favorite of Flynn’s three books. I dunno if it was because it was the last one I read so I’d gotten tired of her schtick, or the plot just wasn’t as compelling to me. Still was a page turner but I don’t have much interest in revisiting it.