Naomi Watts and Bobby Cannavale have signed on to star in The Watcher, a Netflix limited series coming from American Horror Story co-creator Ryan Murphy and his frequent collaborator Ian Brennan (Scream Queens, Ratched, etc.) Watts and Cannavale will be playing
a married couple whose move into their dream home is being threatened by terrifying letters from a stalker, signed “The Watcher.”
This series is inspired by a true story that was big news back in 2015:
A couple bought the 1905 Dutch colonial revival in 2014 for nearly $1.4 million. They were forced to abandon their new home over chilling letters from “The Watcher,” who claimed to have been “watching” the house for decades. “I am the Watcher. Bring me your young blood,” one of the notes read. The family put the house back on the market. It didn’t sell, and they rented it out. In 2017, the renter also received a sinister letter from “The Watcher,” too threatening their life. The house ultimately sold in 2019 for $959,000. The identity of “The Watcher” remains a mystery.
There was a lot of interest in turning the story into a film or TV show back then, but the projects didn't seem to go anywhere. Now The Watcher story will finally be told on the screen, all this time later.
Murphy and Brennan are executive producing The Watcher with Eric Newman, Bryan Unkeless, Henry Joost, and Ariel Schulman.
The series will begin filming this fall.