HBO has announced plans to turn David Cronenberg’s cult 1981 Canadian horror classic “Scanners” into a TV series.
Emmy winner William Bridges (“Black Mirror: USS Callister”) will serve as writer and showrunner for the series. Yann Demange (“Lovecraft Country”) will direct the pilot and both will executive produce for HBO, Wayward Films and Media Res Studio (“The Morning Show,” “Pachinko”).
The original film follows a small group of people with a range of psychic, telepathic and telekinetic powers nicknamed ‘scanners’ with one faction led by the power-mad Revok (Michael Ironside). At the same time a private security firm recruits its own scanners to stop Revok for its own reasons.
The series, which has been in development for several years, is dubbed a visceral thriller set in the world of Cronenberg’s film and will focus on two women living on the fringes of modern society.
The pair are pursued by relentless agents with unimaginable powers and thus must learn to work together to topple a vast conspiracy determined to bring them to heel.
The original film was the first mainstream success for Cronenberg who made a career in the body horror genre that continues to this day with news earlier this morning that actress Lea Seydoux will re-team with him and actor Vincent Cassel for Cronenberg’s next film “The Shrouds” which shoots in Toronto in Spring 2023.
Cronenberg, Michael Ellenberg, Lindsey Springer, Meredith Duff, Sarah Sullivan, René and Fanny-Laure Malo, Pierre David, Clark Peterson and Aaron Gilbert will also all executive produce.
Source: THR
