Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting Of Hill House is one of the horror genre’s true landmarks. It’s a masterpiece of a ghost story and has influenced countless haunted house books, films and TV shows ever since its publication in 1959. It was brilliantly adapted by Robert Wise into the stunning 1963 film The Haunting, woefully adapted in Jan De Bont’s terrible 1999 remake, and now it’s back, thanks to Netflix.
Deadline reports that the streaming service has teamed up with Steven Spielberg’s Amblin TV and Paramount TV to bring Jackson’s classic to a 10 episode series, and they’ve made the perfect choice of filmmaker to bring the insane house and poor Nell Lance to TV.
Oculus‘ Mike Flanagan will write, direct and executive produce. Which is a bit exciting. Flanagan’s regular producing partner Trevor Macy is also on board.
If we had to pick someone to adapt The Haunting Of Hill House, we’d pick Flanagan. We’re huge fans of the filmmaker, who gave us Absentia, Hush, Ouija: Origin Of Evil (and we’re still kind of amazed at how good that was given the first film), and the yet-to-be-released Before I Wake. If you look at Oculus, he’s already toyed with the themes of unreliable narrator in a ghost story, and to be honest, we should all watch Oculus again because it’s brilliant.
Flanagan is currently working on his film of Stephen King’s unadaptable novel Gerald’s Game, which is also produced by Netflix.
This also represents another step in the long relationship between Spielberg and The Haunting Of Hill House. The filmmaker had worked on an adaptation with Stephen King (who has made no secret of the influence of Jackson’s work on his own), but the project never came together and King went off and made Rose Red instead. Spielberg decided not to direct The Haunting, and the remake that ended up being set up at Dreamworks was, as we’ve already stated, a disaster. We’re confident Flanagan can do better.
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