HBO Max has ordered straight-to-series three shows from J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot Productions. ‘Duster’ is an original concept, while ‘Overlook’ is a spin-off of Stephen King’s ‘The Shining’. ‘Justice League Dark’ is based on the DC Comics characters. Abrams and his wife and business partner Katie McGrath, and Bad Robot’s head of TV, Ben Stephenson will executive produce via Bad Robot, with Warner Bros. TV Group.
HBO Max chief content officer, Kevin Reilly stated:
“What an amazing start to our association with the wildly imaginative Bad Robot team under J.J. and Katie. What could be better than an original J.J. idea and then Warner Bros. letting them loose on iconic IP from Stephen King and the DC Universe and to provide more must-have programming on HBO Max.”
Abrams and LaToya Morgan (‘The Walking Dead’, ‘Into the Badlands’) will co-write ‘Duster’, which is reportedly “set in the 1970s Southwest and revolves around the life of a gutsy getaway driver for a growing crime syndicate who goes from awful to wildly, stupidly, dangerously awful.”
‘Overlook’ is named after the isolated hotel from ‘The Shining’ and the show will reportedly include characters from the original novel/movie. ‘Overlook’ “explores the untold, terrifying stories of the most famous haunted hotel in American fiction.” Warner Brothers recently revisited this world in the movie ‘Doctor Sleep’, but before that, a different sequel, entitled ‘Overlook Hotel’, was in development. That would have had an original script by Glen Mazzara.
It wasn’t specified whether this new show would have any connection to the existing Hulu series ‘Castle Rock’ which also depicts locations and characters from King’s work, but that show is also produced by Bad Robot and WB TV.
‘Overlook’ will be executive produced by Dustin Thomason and Scott Brown and will consist of ten episodes. Reportedly, a mini writers room has already been assembled to work on this series during the shut-down that has caused most TV and film productions to halt.
‘Justice League Dark’ may not go by that name when it airs, but it will borrow from the magical DC Comics characters. The original team in the comics consisted of John Constantine, Madame Xanadu, Deadman, Shade the Changing Man, and Zatanna. The most recent version was led by Wonder Woman, and included Detective Chimp, Man-Bat, Swamp Thing, and Zatanna. In addition to the comics, ‘Justice League Dark’ starred in an original animated movie with another, ‘Justice League Dark: Apokolips War’ on the way.
Constantine is already a character on The CW’s ‘Legends of Tomorrow’, played by Matt Ryan, so he most likely won’t appear on this show. Wonder Woman is also probably not on the table.
Previously, the ‘Swamp Thing’ series on DC Universe was poised to assemble a version of Justice League Dark with the titular plant creature (Derek Mears), Blue Devil (Ian Ziering), and possibly the Phantom Stranger (Macon Blair) and Madame Xanadu (Jeryl Prescott). Unfortunately, the show was canceled before it could fully explore this idea.
HBO Max is expected to launch next month and will cost $14.99 per month. Among the other original series that are in development for the service are DC Comics-based ‘Green Lantern’, ‘Strange Adventures’, and ‘DC Super Hero High’, and ‘Raised by Wolves’ from Ridley Scott.
Will you subscribe to HBO Max to watch these shows from Bad Robot?
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
