Following Lillyhammer and House of Cards, Netflix’s next foray into original programming is here. Hemlock Grove, from Eli Roth (Hostel) and based on Brian McGreevy’s 2012 novel of the same name, is a horror mystery series involving murder and monsters. On April 19 all thirteen episodes were made available on Netflix and if you’re a subscriber you can binge-watch ’em all at anytime. Eye the freakishly awesome poster above, and then get a taste of what’s in store with a red-band trailer, a teaser, and arguably the most “realistic” looking werwolf transformation sequence you have ever seen. Continue reading ‘Hemlock Grove’ is now available to stream on Netflix→
Arrested Development isn’t the only Netflix original programming heading to the streaming service this year. In addition to David Fincher’s House of Cards which debuts the first of next month, a supernatural series from horror master Eli Roth is on tap for spring. Hemlock Grove, based on the 2012 novel of the same name written by Brian McGreevy, revolves around the murder of a young high school girl in Hemlock Grove, a former steel community, and centers on the bizarre collection of characters connected to it — who each have varying reasons for getting caught up in it. Roth, McGreevy, Lee Shipman, and Mark Verheiden (Battlestar Galactica) serve as executive producers. Famke Janssen, Bill Skarsgård, Landon Liboiron, Penelope Mitchell, Freya Tingley, and Dougray Scott star.
At the TCAs McGreevy hyped his new series by saying that the emotional violence will play just as big a role as the physical violence on screen. “There’s no shortage of monsters on the show and they tend to fall on different varieties — like what separates a human from a monster,” he expanded. “The short answer to how supernatural the show is, is very.” He went on to describe the show like this: “This is like Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? with more people getting mauled, actually.”
Working with Netflix to bring the adaptation to life ultimately ended up being the perfect decision, McGreevy shared. He admitted that he and his team originally pitched the series to the “more conventional premium networks, but we were holding out for Netflix because they were the most exciting partners.” The levels of violence, nudity, and other risque material featured in Hemlock Grove is comparable to what viewers come to expect on premium networks like Showtime and HBO, he said.
“The architecture of Netflix’s model, when you’re writing a pilot and trying to get that sold, you approach story different than when you’re looking at essentially a 13-hour movie,” McGreevy said. “It’s novel for TV to have a beginning, middle and end when you start out and we really embraced that. It’s like a long 13-hour movie as opposed to episodic television,” Verheiden added. Shipman later revealed that the 13 episode first season deals with most everything that goes down in McGreevy’s book and that there are plans to expand on the story in additional seasons if Netflix approves.
Hemlock Grove premieres on Netflix with all the episodes available for streaming simultaneously as is the Netflix way starting April 19. Watch the trailer embedded above.
Director/producer/actor Eli Roth wants to return to his torture porn roots (Hostel, Hostel PartII). Though Roth had previously told Deadline.com’s Nikke Finke that he was ready to move from such gruesome tales, today he flipped-flopped and exclusively reported to Deadline that “old habits die hard.”
Clown is an upcoming horror flick Roth will likely serve as a producer on. Partners Jon Watts and Christopher D. Ford are set to direct and pen the script, respectively. Watts and Ford created a “mock trailer” for the movie which found its way onto YouTube and captured over 100,000 hits in a month and more importantly Roth’s attention. The concept is simple yet killer. When his son’s sixth birthday is looking gloom since the clown-for-hire doesn’t show up, a father puts on a clown suit that transforms him into a homicidal killer. The mock trailer is embedded above and it’s super creepy and I’m pretty stoked about it. Roth talked Cross Creek Pictures and Vertebra Films into financing a feature transfer.
Says Roth on Clown: “It’s new territory to make this a version of The Fly, where this guy can feel himself changing, blacking out only to find blood all over his clown suit. You’re sympathetic toward a monster until the monster actually takes over.” He continued to tell Deadline, “With horror, you have to live in the danger zone. People are hungry for the next Freddy Krueger, Michael Meyers or Jason Voorhees, and while that has to be earned, we think this cursed clown suit can do it. I am giving us permission to go as hard at this as possible. I know I said I was moving away from horror, but old habits die hard. You think you’re over certain kinds of music and then you hear a Dead Kennedys song and say, ‘Why did I stop listening, I love the Dead Kennedys.'”
Roth also has Aftershock, a thriller based on the aftermath of the February 27, 2010 Chilean earthquake, and a sci-fi flick Endangered Species waiting in the wings for theatrical releases. No word on when Clown will hit theatres, but I look forward to the real trailer to arrive.
