Grady Hendrix’s The Final Girl Support Group is becoming an HBO Max series
A book about women who survive horror movie-like attacks is becoming a TV series
TV News HBO
According to Deadline, horror writer Grady Hendrix’s The Final Girl Support Group—a novel that wears its cinematic inspirations on its sleeve, which is close to a pun—is getting an adaptation. This is basically the book’s ultimate destiny, because it seemed perfectly suited to an adaptation, but the twist here is that the slasher book based on slasher movies is becoming… a slasher TV show. The project is being developed for HBO Max by Charlize Theron and her Denver & Delilah Films label as well as Barbara and Andy Muschietti’s Double Dream. Andy Muschietti, who knows a thing or two about slashing from his It movies (not that Pennywise is a traditional slasher, but he does slash), will also direct the show’s pilot, though it doesn’t sound like any other details like that, be they writer or directors or actors, have been announced.
For those who haven’t read the book, which is understandable since it came out just last week, The Final Girl Support Group is about exactly what it sounds like: In a universe where the famous slasher movie attacks of the ‘70s and ‘80s really happened (or at least legally distinct variations of them), there’s a support group for the women who were left behind as the sole survivors of this world’s versions of Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees. As anyone who has ever seen a horror movie can guess, though, at some point the Final Girls start disappearing and things get scary. The book also has in-universe supplementary material detailing what happened to these women, so it’ll be interesting to see how that’s translated into the adaptation. HBO Max has the opportunity to do some fun horror movie homages with this TV series, or it could pull a Space Jam/Ready Player One and fill in the background with actual fictional murderers, which would… maybe be bad, actually.
15 Comments
That was quick.
all of his books sell well before publication. I think this sold about 8 months ago. announcement is happening now to capitalize on book release publicity.
Sounds like a Behind the Mask spin-off.
Although to be fair, Behind the Mask wasn’t exactly the most novel concept either. Still liked it a ton though.
Behind the Mask’s most obvious predecessor is “Man Bites Dog”, but that didn’t have any slasher stuff, it was just documentarians following around a serial killer.
You ever see “Last House on Dead End Street” or “The Great Hollywood Rape Slaughter”? Both kind of have that sort of thing, although it’s also the concept of the film maker making a doc/live film as well.
I don’t think I had even heard of those.
It will be like Behind the Mask, only maybe it won’t suck.
a novel that wears its cinematic inspirations on its sleeve, which is close to a punI’m not detecting any brain activity, doctor.
For any fans of Grady Hendrix, he appears on quite a good episode of Teen Creeps where they do a sort of state of YA summit and talk about the development of YA horror .
I hope this show doesn’t inspire any real-life killings because a movie based on those could be really confusing
Andy Muschietti, who knows a thing or two about slashing from his It movies … will also direct the show’s pilotI know It is not exactly super easy material to adapt, but god that second movie was bad. Every single scare was undercut with lame attempts at comedy and corny self-empowerment nonsense that really did not work for me. I cannot imagine a worse fit for this project.
Could not happen to a better guy. You go Grady!
Hendrix comes up with clever story ideas, but his writing is abysmal, so I’m looking forward to this. TV is probably his optimal medium since his books read like descriptive captions to begin with.
What a terribly written article this is.