It looks like HBO enjoys being in the Jean-Marc Vallée business. The director behind “Dallas Buyers Club” and “Wild” already has “Big Little Lies,” starring Reese Witherspoon and Nicole Kidman, in the can for the network. And now he’s got another starry project for the small screen, and HBO wants to have it.
And indeed, they shall. First announced earlier this year when it started gearing up, HBO has now acquired “Sharp Objects,” the best-selling thriller from “Gone Girl” author Gillian Flynn. Marti Noxon (“Buffy The Vampire Slayer,” “Fright Night“) will co-write the story with Flynn, and showrun the series, which will follow a reporter who returns to her hometown to cover the killings of two young girls. Here’s the book synopsis:
Fresh from a brief stay at a psych hospital, reporter Camille Preaker faces a troubling assignment: she must return to her tiny hometown to cover the murders of two preteen girls. For years, Camille has hardly spoken to her neurotic, hypochondriac mother or to the half-sister she barely knows: a beautiful thirteen-year-old with an eerie grip on the town. Now, installed in her old bedroom in her family’s Victorian mansion, Camille finds herself identifying with the young victims — a bit too strongly. Dogged by her own demons, she must unravel the psychological puzzle of her own past if she wants to get the story — and survive this homecoming.
HBO has given “Sharp Objects” an eight-episode order out of the gate and it’s all systems go, with Vallée to direct every episode. Exciting stuff, and perhaps a good substitute for “True Detective” season three, which seems to be nowhere in sight.