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SYFY WIRE Terry Matalas

WIRE Buzz: Olivia Wilde tackles Don't Worry, Darling; The Last American Vampire to Quibi; more

By Christian Long
The Last American Vampire Novel

Olivia Wilde is returning to the director's chair. The Tron: Legacy star directed the teen comedy Booksmart, which was released in theaters to rave reviews earlier this year. Now, she'll be tackling something drastically different for her sophomore project, Don’t Worry, Darling. Wilde with both direct and star in the 50s-set psychological thriller, which centers on a discontented housewife. 

Any additional details are sparse this early on, but it is being reported that Booksmart co-writer Katie Silberman will re-work a script from Shane and Carey Van Dyke, who penned the German-language horror flick The Silence for Netflix. Silberman will also produce alongside Roy Lee, who also produced the mega-popular 2017 horror flick It

(via Entertainment Weekly)


Next up, The Last American Vampire is ready to take a bite out of Quibi. 

The short-form streaming service, set to launch next April, has picked up the Terry Matalas series, which was previously in development at NBC. The series is based on Seth Grahame-Smith’s novel of the same name. The story involves an FBI agent named Abby who teams up with 500-year-old vampire Henry Sturges to protect the world from a mysterious threat. 

Sturges was first seen in another of Smith's novels, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, where he was mostly a supporting character. In The Last American Vampire, he's the last of his kind and only brought back into action after four decades of being imprisoned. 

Despite the move to Quibi, Matalas, who was the showrunner of the acclaimed series 12 Monkeys, will still pen the script and executive produce the supernatural drama. 

(via The Hollywood Reporter


Finally, Disney has formally taken control of Hulu's original programming. 

Yes, Disney has it's own streaming service, Disney+, set to debut in November, but The House of Mouse is aiming to make that platform strictly family-friendly. This leaves Hulu with a void to fill in terms of content that skews more PG-13 and beyond, and Disney's eager to fill it. 

This new arrangement will have Craig Erwich, Hulu’s senior vice president of scripted originals, reporting to Disney Television Studios and ABC Entertainment boss Dana Walden directly. Previously, he had reported to Hulu's CEO Randy Freer, though Erwich will continue to lead scripted originals planning and development for Hulu’s original content. In the five years since Erwich joined Hulu, it has produced programs including The Handmaid's Tale, Catch-22, and Castle Rock. The service is also working on developing a series based on the Douglas Adams cult novel, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

The TV-centric streamer, which currently boasts around 28 million subscribers, had previously been controlled by Disney, 20th Century Fox, and Comcast. Disney then acquired Fox, given it an even larger share of the platform. Before long, Comcast ceded its stake, leaving Disney in complete control

(via Variety)