Fresh off “Midnight Mass,” Netflix will be reteaming with Mike Flanagan for “The Fall of the House of Usher,” a just-announced new series based on the works of Edgar Allan Poe.
The limited series from Intrepid Pictures is “based on multiple works from Poe.” 8 episodes have been ordered. Flanagan and Michael Fimognari will each direct four episodes.
What exactly can we expect from “The Fall of the House of Usher”? Speaking with Bloody Disgusting’s The Boo Crew Podcast this week, Flanagan gave us a sneak preview.
“A lot of the stuff I do is a slow burn. The Fall of the House of Usher is a brush fire,” Flanagan teases. “It is an explosion. It is as aggressive and rock ‘n roll and over the top and just violent and insane and horrific as anything I have ever done… by a lot. We’re gonna pull all the all stars from the Intrepid group of actors and some great new faces and we’re just gonna fucking jam.”
He continues, “We want just buckets of blood pouring out of the ceiling on page two. And we’re just gonna go ballistic. And we’re gonna do it all to the music of one of the most intensely effective gothic horror writers. This is what we’ve been craving. A chance to just go ballistic on something. The entire catalogue of Poe is wide open. It’s all public domain. We can cherry pick whatever we want and put it into one giant, crazy, heavy metal riff that’s just blood-soaked and wild. In a sense, we get to blow off steam after five very emotional years. And it lets me play in a corner of the genre I haven’t gotten to play in in a long time. It’s a relief really. It’s fun to have fun.”
“We start shooting in January,” Flanagan adds. “They’re gonna announce the cast at some point soon. The cast is absurd. And ridiculously exciting.”
In other words, while previous Flanagan shows for Netflix, including “Hill House,” “Bly Manor” and now this year’s “Midnight Mass,” focused intensely on character-driven emotional horror, “The Fall of the House of Usher” is going to be an entirely different brand of Mike Flanagan Horror, favoring over the top violence and Edgar Allan Poe insanity. We. Cannot. Wait.
Find the full episode with Mike Flanagan later this week over on TalesFromTheBooCrew.com.