By In a major win for HBO Max, WarnerMedia’s upcoming streaming service, JJ Abrams has committed to various levels of involvement across three series: a Justice League Dark program, Overlook–a spin-off of Stephen King’s The Shining, and the crime drama Duster.
Overlook spins off of King’s novel as well as Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 adaptation, telling “the untold, terrifying stories of the most famous haunted hotel in American fiction.” The Shining famously has several disparities between King’s book and the film adaptation, so it will be interesting to see the direction Overlook takes. Said to consist of ten episodes, the series is being developed by Bad Robot, Stephen King, and Warner Bros, with scripts from Castle Rock writers Dustin Thomason and Scott Brown.
Last year Doctor Sleep adapted the King novel of the same name, a sequel to The Shining.
Meanwhile, Southwestern crime drama Duster is co-written by Abrams and LaToya Morgan (The Walking Dead), focusing on a “gutsy getaway driver for a growing crime syndicate who goes from awful to wildly, stupidly, dangerously awful.”
Finally, Abrams and HBO are keeping details tight on their adaptation of DC’s Justice League Dark, the comic book team that most-often consists of John Constantine, Shade, the Changing Man, Zatanna, Deadman, and Madame Xanadu. Good old Swamp Thing has also been known to tag along.
A Justice League Dark project has infamously been floating around Hollywood for years now, going so far as having Guillermo del Toro write an entire script for the unmade film. It is unclear if any of the previous work around an adaptation is being considered for Abrams’ series.
HBO Max is set to launch sometime in May for $14.99 a month.
J.J. Abrams Sets 3 HBO Max Shows: Justice League Dark, ‘The Shining’ Spinoff, ‘Duster’ [The Hollywood Reporter]