In a press release out earlier today, Netflix announced that it has signed Famke Janssen and Bill Skarsgard to star in a new series penned by Brian McGreevy called ‘Hemlock Grove.’
The 13 episode hour long series is based on the gothic horror novel that McGreevy wrote and will be published next week (March 27th to be exact). Eli Roth (‘Grindhouse’, ‘Cabin Fever’, ‘Hostel’) is set to helm the project as well as have executive producing credit along with McGreevy and writing partner Lee Shipman who will co-write with McGreevy on the series.
Janssen (‘X-Men’ movies, ‘Nip/Tuck’, ‘Hansel and Gretal: Witch Hunters’) will play Olivia, “the otherworldly beautiful and controlling grand dame of Hemlock Grove” and Skarsgard (‘Anna Karenina’) ‘will play her son, Roman, an arrogant aristocratic like young man who rules the town’s social scene.
Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos is excited about the series and compares the project as a mix of J.D. Salinger and Mary Shelley:
“Eli Roth is a master of this genre, and Brian McGreevy’s brilliant novel gives Roth a world where he can create his magic. Hemlock Grove is a sly blend of J.D. Salinger and Mary Shelley and will appeal to a broad base of fans captivated by these rich characters and stunning visuals.”
As for Roth, this will be his first venture into series television:
“I’ve been waiting for years to dive into television and Eric Newman and I founded Arcade to do elevated genre projects exactly like ‘Hemlock Grove.’ Brian McGreevy’s novel blew me away, and the material lends itself perfectly to long format storytelling. ‘Hemlock Grove’ is smart, dark, complex, and at times terrifying.”
Roth added that working with Netflix was like “telling a story in a new medium” and thought the company was “the perfect hybrid of cinema, television, and social networking, with the creative freedom to go as dark as the story needs.”
‘Hemlock Grove’ will be available to Netflix users to stream instantly sometime in the beginning of 2013. In the meantime, here’s the official synopsis of the book from Amazon to whet your appetite until then:
“The body of a young girl is found mangled and murdered in the woods of Hemlock Grove, Pennsylvania, in the shadow of the abandoned Godfrey Steel mill. A manhunt ensues—though the authorities aren’t sure if it’s a man they should be looking for.
Some suspect an escapee from the White Tower, a foreboding biotech facility owned by the Godfrey family—their personal fortune and the local economy having moved on from Pittsburgh steel—where some suspect that biological experiments of the most unethical kind take place. Others turn to Peter Rumancek, a Gypsy trailer-trash kid who has told impressionable high school classmates that he’s a werewolf. Or perhaps it’s Roman, the son of the late J. R. Godfrey, who rules the adolescent social scene with the casual arrogance of a cold-blooded aristocrat, his superior status unquestioned despite his decidedly freakish sister, Shelley, whose monstrous medical conditions belie a sweet intelligence, and his otherworldly, sexy control freak of a mother, Olivia. As the crime goes unsolved and the police seem more and more willing to believe any outlandish rumor, Peter and Roman decide the only way to save their own skins is to find the killer themselves. Along the way they uncover local secrets and designs that are much bigger than some small-town murder.”
