The Haunting of Hill House creator Mike Flanagan has officially begun production on his latest Netflix project. Flanagan confirmed the news on his personal Twitter account, posting an image of a production slate followed by the caption reading, "And we're off! #day1 #midnightclub." Flanagan's latest collaboration with the streaming giant will be a teen-horror series based on the popular novel The Midnight Club by author Christopher Pike.
This will be Flanagan's fifth time collaborating with Netflix. He recently wrapped filming on a different Netflix series shrouded in mystery titled Midnight Mass. His previous Netflix films include Gerald's Game, an adaptation of a Stephen King short story, and Hush, an original horror film starring Kate Siegel as a secluded deaf writer whose forced to fight off a masked killer.
Flanagan gained a lot of notoriety with the hit Netflix anthology horror series The Haunting of Hill House, based on the Shirley Jackson novel of the same name. Flanagan served as an executive producer and director on Hill House, which was extremely well received by audiences and critics. The show explores the lives of five adult siblings and their father, whose experiences growing up in the haunted Hill House mansion continue to affect them in the present day. Flanagan returned as an executive producer and director for the second season of the series titled The Haunting of Bly Manor, which was a loose adaptation of the novella titled The Turn of the Screw by Henry James. While Bly Manor received mostly positive reviews, some felt that it did not hold up to the quality of the first season.
In recent years, Flanagan has become one of the most prominent horror directors working today. Outside of his work at Netflix, Flanagan also directed the 2019 adaptation of Stephen King's Doctor Sleep, which saw Ewan McGregor as a now grown-up Danny Torrence from Stanley Kubrick's The Shining. The film drew heavily on the Kubrick predecessor and saw Danny dealing with his traumatic past as he faced off against a cult of psychics who share his ability to use The Shining. While the film initially received mixed reviews, some audiences and critics praised the extended director's cut that was included in the home media release. Flanagan's other horror credits include Oculus, Before I Wake, Absentia, and the 2016 prequel Ouji: Origin of Evil.
The official synopsis of the Midnight Club novel reads: "Rotterdam Home, a hospice where teenagers with terminal illnesses went to die, was home to the Midnight Club--a group of five young men and women who met at midnight and told stories of intrigue and horror. One night they made a pact that the first of them to die would make every effort to contact the others . . . from beyond the grave." Flanagan seems right at home with the supernatural ghost elements of The Midnight Club.
When the project was first confirmed, Flanagan shared his excitement on social media, claiming to have been brainstorming an adaption since he was a teenager and that he is honored to able to introduce a new generation of horror fans to the work of its author, Pike. The Midnight Club does not currently have a release date but is scheduled to come out sometime in 2022.
The Haunting of Hill House and The Haunting of Bly Manor are available on Netflix right now.
Source: Mike Flanagan | Twitter