Cary Fukunaga, who made a name for himself with last year’s fantastic HBO drama True Detective, has signed on to tackle another serial killer tale for television. Fukunaga will direct and produce The Alienist, which is based on Caleb Carr’s 1994 novel. Paramount TV is producing, as are screenwriters Eric Roth (FORREST GUMP) and Hossein Amini (DRIVE).
The novel is about the following:
The year is 1896, the place, New York City. On a cold March night New York Times reporter John Schuyler Moore is summoned to the East River by his friend and former Harvard classmate Dr. Laszlo Kreizler, a psychologist, or “alienist.” On the unfinished Williamsburg Bridge, they view the horribly mutilated body of an adolescent boy, a prostitute from one of Manhattan’s infamous brothels.
The newly appointed police commissioner, Theodore Roosevelt, in a highly unorthodox move, enlists the two men in the murder investigation, counting on the reserved Kreizler’s intellect and Moore’s knowledge of New York’s vast criminal underworld. They are joined by Sara Howard, a brave and determined woman who works as a secretary in the police department. Laboring in secret (for alienists, and the emerging discipline of psychology, are viewed by the public with skepticism at best), the unlikely team embarks on what is a revolutionary effort in criminology– amassing a psychological profile of the man they’re looking for based on the details of his crimes. Their dangerous quest takes them into the tortured past and twisted mind of a murderer who has killed before. and will kill again before the hunt is over.
Fukunaga will presumably make The Alienist after he wraps up his adaptation of Stephen King’s IT, which begins shooting this summer.