Photos of Jordan Peele and 'Lovecraft Country' via Wikimedia Commons and Amazon, respectively
After scoring rave reviews and blowing up the box office with Get Out, Jordan Peele has become a hot item in Hollywood. He landed a first-look deal with Universal for his next film earlier this month, and now he's going to produce his own HBO show—a series tackling some of the same themes as Get Out set in America's Jim Crow era.According to Deadline, the series is based on Matt Ruff's 2016 novel Lovecraft Country, a horror story that follows a 22-year-old black army vet named Atticus Turner on a search for his missing father. Turner treks from Chicago to New England in the 1950s, encountering as much resistance from racist, backward white America as he does from evil, fantastical spirits. Soon, Turner discovers his father's been kidnapped by a spooky cabal called the Order of the Ancient Dawn and fights to save his life."When I first read Lovecraft Country I knew it had the potential to be unlike anything else on television," showrunner Misha Green said in a statement. "Jordan, JJ, Bad Robot, Warner Bros, and HBO are all in the business of pushing the limits when it comes to storytelling, and I am beyond thrilled to be working with them on this project."Green—the writer behind the slavery thriller series Underground—will run the operation and serve as executive producer alongside Peele, JJ Abrams, and his Bad Robot Productions partner, Ben Stephenson. Part horror, part social commentary, Lovecraft County seems like the perfect fodder for Peele, who explored the idea of white privilege with Get Out."I think when you just tell people to think, people tend to get resistant and defensive, and feel like you're accusing them of not thinking," Peele told the Verge in March. "When you allow people to submerge themselves into a story, they will react by thinking through what it's about. That's just so much more fun and effective, I think, than a lecture."