Teen Wolf creator Jeff Davis has two new shows in the works, so if you’ve been missing all the glorious horror he’s given us in the past, you’re in luck!
Teen Wolf has been over for a year and some change (not that I’m counting), and I often think about what project Jeff Davis might tackle next. If you’ve seen even a single episode of Teen Wolf, you know he has an affinity for horror, so it was only a matter of time until he dug his claws into something else that would pique our interests.
Luckily, two of his newest upcoming projects sound like promising ventures. There’s been talk, in the past, of Davis tackling everything from War of the Worlds to Let the Right One In to Aeon Flux.
While we haven’t heard news about War of the Worlds or Let the Right One In recently, Aeon Flux was announced just a few months ago, so I’m still holding out hope that we’ll get to see that sooner rather than later.
Never one to slow down for too long, however, it was recently announced that Davis will be working on two new projects as well, Strangers and Night Gallery.
First up is Strangers, an adaptation of the Dean Koontz novel of the same name, set to have a home at Fox.
The book’s synopsis reads:
A writer in California. A doctor in Boston. A motel owner and his employee in Nevada. A priest in Chicago. A robber in New York. A little girl in Las Vegas. They’re a handful of people from across the country, living through eerie variations of the same nightmare.
A dark memory is calling out to them. And soon they will be drawn together, deep in the heart of a sprawling desert, where the terrifying truth awaits…
With a sprawling cast and some major horror elements, this seems like a project fit for Davis’ tastes. According to Variety, Fox has given the pilot a script commitment with penalty, which means even if they decide to pass on it, the producers will get an undisclosed sum of money, regardless.
In terms of the show actually making it to the small screen, this is good news, since it means Fox has more of an incentive to move forward with it.
Davis will write and executive produce Strangers, with Koontz also serving as an executive producer. Having the author attached to the project also bodes well for the series, though we still have a ways to go before we can start talking about the details, like casting or release dates.
The second project currently on Davis’ plate is a re-imaginging of the Rod Serling anthology Night Gallery. According to Deadline, Syfy has picked it up for development. Davis and David Janollari, an executive producer on Midnight, Texas, will spearhead the project.
The original Night Gallery (1969-73) was kind of like The Twilight Zone but dealt less with sci-fi themes and more with horror overtones. As you can imagine, H.P. Lovecraft was certainly an inspiration, and can give you an idea of the sort of material we may be seeing out of this.
In the original show, the narrator walked through a museum gallery full of paintings that captured the heart of whichever story we’d see play out in the episode. Although perhaps not as well-known as The Twilight Zone (which is getting rebooted at CBS All Access by Jordan Peele), it did give Steven Spielberg his first directorial job and inspired other filmmakers like Guillermo del Toro, influencing their future body of work.
“Featuring dark and twisted morality tales paired with Serling’s specific brand of irony, Night Gallery will explore and exploit every modern nightmare imaginable, mining our fears of the dangers of social media,” writes Deadline.
Again, it’ll be a while until we get further details on either of these new projects, or some of the older ones that have been in the works for Davis for some time, but once news starts circulating, I’ll be sure to keep everyone updated.