Williams, Lathan join Jordan Peele’s Lovecraft, Twilight Zone projects

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

Having had great success writing and directing his horror debut GET OUT (and even earning an Oscar in the process), comedy star Jordan Peele is now proving to be very committed to making genre projects. Not only is he working on a new horror film titled US, he also a has a couple genre TV shows in the works.

Set up at HBO is an anthology adaptation of the Matt Ruff novel Lovecraft Country, which Peele is executive producing with J.J. Abrams and writer Misha Green. That show will tell us what happens when

Atticus Black joins up with his friend Letitia and his Uncle George to embark on a road trip across 1950s Jim Crow America in search of his missing father. Thus begins a struggle to survive and overcome both the racist terrors of white America and the terrifying monsters that could be ripped from a Lovecraft paperback.

Jonathan Majors, Jurnee Smollett-Bell, and Courtney B. Vance are playing Atticus, Letitia, and Uncle George, respectively. Also in the cast are Wunmi Mosaku as Letitia's hustler half-sister Ruby Dandridge, Aunjanue Ellis as George's wife Hippolyta Freeman, Jamie Harris as country sheriff Eunice Hunt, and Elizabeth Debicki as Christina Braithwhite, daughter of the leader of a secret order called the Sons of Adam.

Lovecraft Country now has a new cast member: Michael Kenneth Williams (pictured above), who's best known for playing the role of Omar on The Wire. On this show, Williams will be playing Atticus's missing father, Montrose Freeman. "Hard-headed and secretive, he has always believed you can’t live in a fantasy world, which is why he despises his son’s pulp novels."

Another genre show Peele is developing is a reboot of the classic property The Twilight Zone for CBS All Access. He will also be hosting the new version of the show, which was 

the brainchild of Emmy Award-winner Rod Serling, who served as host and wrote over 80 episodes of the original show's 150-plus episode run. It's a strange mix of horror, science-fiction, drama, comedy and superstition. Serling introduced each episode, and many of the black and white hours concluded with a surprise ending. Actors such as Burt Reynolds, Roddy McDowell and Robert Redford made appearances in some of the more well-known stories.

It has now been announced that Sanaa Lathan of ALIEN VS. PREDATOR has been cast in an episode of the new Twilight Zone that's titled Rewind. No details were revealed on the episode's story or Lathan's character.

Lovecraft Country and The Twilight Zone are both expected to premiere sometime in 2019.