It’s hard to know if Ryan Murphy is bored in quarantine like the rest of us or if he’s just having a normal one: The absurdly prolific television creator/producer hopped on a Zoom call with a bunch of American Horror Story regulars, where—he reveals via Instagram caption accompany screenshot of said Zoom call—that he’s working on a spinoff of the wildly interconnected/extremely convoluted anthology series… though one could argue that each of the 800 character arcs per season serves as a spinoff unto itself. REGARDLESS, Murphy has decreed that this series will be dubbed American Horror Stories (plural! Genius!) and will consist of hour-long “contained” episodes, as if he has suddenly discovered how to Marie Kondo his narratives into something resembling “neat and tidy.”
Although Murphy stopped short of offering any actual details about the new spinoff series, Variety suggests each episode will explore a different ghost story, and will inevitably feature various actors from the Ryan Murphy Nighttime Players troupe. Meanwhile, production on American Horror Story proper has been affected by the coronavirus pandemic, and it’s unclear how that will impact the premiere date for season 10, which stars Macaulay Culkin—who will have a “crazy, erotic sex” scene with Kathy Bates, according to Murphy.
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I had a sudden revelation the other day when I watched the end of #BlackAF, specifically the excellent segment where Kenya meets Tyler Perry. Ryan Murphy is a soul brother to Tyler Perry. Clearly talented, wildly erratic in quality, and completely uninterested in consistent tone. They both have loyal core fan bases despite all the rockiness. Murphy wins a lot more awards than Kenya in the “elite” circles, but they both do well in their core demographics.
I say all of this as a begrudging fan of both of them. I just sorta wish they tried a little harder on each thing, rather than having 47,000 projects each.
As far as Ryan Murphy goes, I think this idea sort of makes sense. The average AHS season is a clusterfuck of insanity and nonsense by the end (which I love, admittedly). Doing a version of the show like this should hopefully lead to tighter, more coherent stories. … Okay, it just means Dermot McDylan will have to tearjerk faster to get to the Christmas ghosts,.this is still a Murphy show.
Ok. Now we’re talkin. New stories per episode makes this a traditional horror anthology now.
This actually makes a lot of sense. It lets them revisit characters from earlier seasons, while allowing each new AHS season to be its own thing and not get bogged down with cameos and sequels.
Seasonal anthologies are cool and all, but episodic anthologies are the absolute best. This is very exciting, held back slightly by being AHS and Ryan Murphy. I don’t expect greatness, but I do expect watchable content using my favorite format. One of the only things that would make it even more exciting is if it were science fiction instead of horror.
Each season of the parent show only has about one idea, though. Absent a whole bunch of collaborators, it’s hard for me to imagine how more of his dreck will be good.
“Ryan Murphy’s Tales from the Crypt/ Tales from the Darkside/ Creepshow” sounds kind of promising. Every season of AHS suffers from wild tangents, dead ends, and excess subplots. One episode bites might be the perfect length to force them to focus.