Get ready for more Haunting. After Netflix’s very successful horror series The Haunting of Hill House, executive producer Mike Flanagan knew he had to do it again. But that season was contained. That story told. How could he do a sequel?
The Haunting of Bly Manor answers that question. The new show premieres October 9 and is described as a standalone season in The Haunting Anthology. It uses several of the same actors from Hill House (Victoria Pedretti, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Henry Thomas) and recasts them in a fresh take on Henry James’ often adapted The Turn of the Screw. But it’s more than that, too. In the below video, Flanagan and his crew explain how they went from Hill House to Bly Manor and what makes Bly Manor so different.
The idea of taking other Henry James stories and fusing them with Turn of the Screw certainly has great potential. But what’s most intriguing about this video is Flanagan explaining how Hill House was about a family and Bly Manor is about strangers. Assuming the show spends lots of time introducing characters to one another, as opposed to characters being with people they already know, the audience develops a more personal connection with them. Both on screen and off, everyone is meeting at the same time. It completely changes the dynamics of the show. Then, if it works, the scares could end up being even more personal.
Either way, if The Haunting of Bly Manor is half as good as the stunningly incredible Hill House, we’re all in for a treat come October 9.
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