Sam Mendes and John Logan will deliver Penny Dreadful to Showtime

Last Updated on July 23, 2021

So it is official– horror is taking over television. In our third horror TV news story of the day it has been announced that SKYFALL team Sam Mendes and John Logan will be bringing PENNY DREADFUL to Showtime.

In November, we reported that Mendes and Logan were developing a Victorian-set monster show that would interweave the characters of Frankenstein, Dracula, and Dorian Gray. That has now become PENNY DREADFUL, a “psychosexual horror” program that has been committed to series and will go before cameras during the second half of this year. Mendes is executive producing with partner Pippa Harris, while John Logan will be writing every episode.

Showtime President David Nivens describes the series as “very realistic and very grounded, not Bela Lugosi. All [the monsters] exist in human form in turn-of-century London.” Based on the synopsis below that does not sound like an overstatement. Check it out and talkback with your thoughts on the upcoming literary monster mash-up.

In PENNY DREADFUL, some of literature’s most famously terrifying characters – including Dr. Frankenstein and his creature, Dorian Gray and iconic figures from the novel Dracula – become embroiled in Victorian London. The series weaves together these classic horror origin stories as the characters grapple with their monstrous alienation.