Coming off of the success of ‘Pacific Rim,’ we’re already onto Guillermo Del Toro‘s next major endeavor. It’s going to be a television show entitled ‘The Strain’ on FX, that he’ll be producing and directing and, according to those behind the scenes, it’s shaping up to run for 3-5 seasons.

John Landgraf, FX’s Productions CEO, recently sat down at the TCA Press Tour to talk about some of their upcoming shows. The main one we cared about though was, of course, del Toro’s ‘The Strain’ which will be based upon the novels that was written by both del Toro and Chuck Hogan.

So far, ‘The Strain’ will star Corey Stoll (‘The Bourne Legacy’) as the lead, John Hurt (too many great roles to choose from), Sean Austin (‘Lord of the Rings’) and Robert Maillet ( ‘Pacific Rim’, ‘Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters’) as the villain.

For those who don’t know much about the novels, let’s take a quick look at the official description:

They have always been here. Vampires. In secret and in darkness. Waiting. Now their time has come.

In one week, Manhattan will be gone. In one month, the country. In two months–the world.

A Boeing 777 arrives at JFK and is on its way across the tarmac, when it suddenly stops dead. All window shades are pulled down. All lights are out. All communication channels have gone quiet. Crews on the ground are lost for answers, but an alert goes out to the CDC. Dr. Eph Goodweather, head of their Canary project, a rapid-response team that investigates biological threats, gets the call and boards the plane. What he finds makes his blood run cold.

In a pawnshop in Spanish Harlem, a former professor and survivor of the Holocaust named Abraham Setrakian knows something is happening. And he knows the time has come, that a war is brewing . . .

So begins a battle of mammoth proportions as the vampiric virus that has infected New York begins to spill out into the streets. Eph, who is joined by Setrakian and a motley crew of fighters, must now find a way to stop the contagion and save his city–a city that includes his wife and son–before it is too late.

So knowing del Toro’s work, you are going to expect something really dark and visual. How is this going to pan out on the show? Well, according to Landgraf, “It’s pretty graphic. It’s a horror show. I think you can expect content commensurate with ‘The Walking Dead’ or ‘American Horror Story’.”

Referencing two of the hottest shows on television when it comes to horror is great and all, but will they deliver? I sure as hell hope so! FX has a solid history of successfully being able to pull off gritty and I think they are the network that can bring ‘The Strain’ to the small screen! They are also generally good at knowing when to end a show as in the cases of both ‘The Shield’ and ‘Rescue Me’. So how many seasons does FX hope to have with this series? Langraf gave a solid and specific response to that:

“No. It’s a trilogy, and the trilogy ends the story. It’s a truly epic story. And when Guillermo [del Toro] came in to sell it, one of the things they made clear is that they wanted to tell the story of the books. That story would be told over three, four or five seasons. They have work to do, in terms of figuring out how they are going to resituate that story, in an episodic television series, but it will be somewhere between 39 and 65 episodes. No less and no more, and I’m really excited about that.”

So there you go! We are looking at a solid 3-5 seasons worth of del Toro goodness. While I know he won’t be directing every episode (especially if he starts working on a sequel to ‘Pacific Rim’ or ‘Hellboy’) the novels are co-written by him so he’ll absolutely be keeping his eyes on things. Are you ready for a modern day telling of vampires by the mind of del Toro for 3-5 seasons? Sound off below!

Source: Collider.