NBC is planning to administer a double dose of classic horror, with the news that the network is moving forward with miniseries adaptations of both Roman Polanski’s iconic horror film Rosemary’s Baby and Stephen King’s acclaimed novel The Tommyknockers.
The announcement indicates that NBC has been watching closely as ‘event’ miniseries like CBS’ Under the Dome and FX’s American Horror Story have delivered surprisingly high ratings, and as its own horror series Hannibal has quickly gained a loyal cult following.
NBC president Bob Greenblatt said that the Rosemary’s Baby reboot will in fact be more of a re-imagining of the original Ira Levin novel on which Polanski’s film was based, rather than a direct remake of the film. The miniseries will focus on a young woman and her husband living in Paris and will be an “edge-of-your-seat thriller” comprised of four episodes. Interestingly, the Rosemary’s Baby miniseries will be updated for modern times, suggesting that the miniseries will follow a slightly different storyline than both the original book and film. No casting has yet occurred for the project.
Greenblatt also announced the development of Stephen King’s Tommyknockers, a miniseries based on King’s novel about the citizens of a sleepy Maine town who come to believe that an alien spacecraft has crashed in the nearby woods. Emmy Award-winning director Yves Simoneau (Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee) is set to direct all of the miniseries’ episodes. This isn’t the first time that the science-fiction horror novel has been adapted for television – a 1993 Tommyknockers miniseries starred Marg Helgenberger and Jimmy Smits. As with Rosemary’s Baby, the project is still in early stages, and no casting has yet occurred.
Stephen King’s Tommyknockers certainly hews closely to Under the Dome – both are miniseries based on Stephen King novels that find unsuspecting Maine townspeople suddenly influenced by a mysterious extraterrestrial presence they can neither control nor fully understand – but NBC is clearly hoping that viewers either don’t notice the similarities or don’t care.
Horror television is having a moment – seemingly almost all American TV networks have been developing their own creepy series over the past three or four years. Rosemary’s Baby and Tommyknockers join a growing lineup of recent horror shows including American Horror Story, Hannibal, Netflix’s Hemlock Grove, AMC’s The Walking Dead, and Syfy’s Being Human.
Which upcoming NBC series are you most excited about? And who would you cast as Rosemary for the new miniseries? Let us know in the comments section.