Jordan Peele and JJ Abrams will take us into Lovecraft Country

Last Updated on July 31, 2021

Jordan Peele, who had been best known for his work in comedy, said that he would be continuing to work in the horror genre after first delving into it with his hugely successful feature directorial debut GET OUT, and that holds true with the announcement of his latest project. Peele will be producing, through his company Monkeypaw Productions, a series adaptation of the 2016 Matt Ruff novel Lovecraft Country.

The book follows 

25-year-old Atticus Black. After his father goes missing, Black joins up with his friend Letitia and his Uncle George to embark on a road trip across 1950s Jim Crow America to find him. This begins a struggle to survive and overcome both the racist terrors of white America and the malevolent spirits that could be ripped from a Lovecraft paperback.

J.J. Abrams' Bad Robot will be producing the series alongside Peele / Monkeypaw and Warner Bros. Television. The one-hour show has already been given a straight-to-series order by HBO.

Lovecraft Country was discovered by Peele, who took the property to Bad Robot and brought Misha Green, co-creator of the TV series Undergound, on board to write the pilot episode. Green had this to say about the project: 

When I first read Lovecraft Country I knew it had the potential to be unlike anything else on television. Jordan, JJ, Bad Robot, Warner Bros and HBO are all in the business of pushing the limits when it comes to storytelling, and I am beyond thrilled to be working with them on this project."

On her Twitter account, Green also added that she is excited "to tell genre stories where the black folks don't die first."

The goal is to make Lovecraft Country an anthology series that "reclaims genre storytelling from the African-American perspective."

I haven't read Ruff's novel, but this sound interesting, and it will be good to have an anthology horror series back on HBO, which was the home of Tales from the Crypt back in the day.

Misha Green