Christopher Cantwell, who co-created the series Halt and Catch Fire for AMC, is now set to serve as showrunner on a horror anthology called The Devil in Silver that’s in development at the network. Devil in Silver was created by Victor LaValle and is based on his novel of the same name. According to Deadline, season 1 of this anthology will center on
Pepper, a working class man from Queens who, through a combination of bad luck and a bad temper, finds himself wrongfully committed to a psychiatric hospital. There, he must contend with other patients, doctors who harbor dark secrets of their own, and perhaps even a true and even more terrifying evil.
Cantwell and LaValle will be executive producing The Devil in Silver alongside Scott Free, EMJAG, and Entertainment 360. If the show continues beyond the first season, the idea is that it would “feature average people caught up in horrific stories in today’s world.”
The writers’ room for The Devil in Silver is now open. AMC’s Dan McDermott provided the following statement about the development of this show and a series based on the 1960s sci-fi thriller Seconds, which is also coming from people who were involved with Halt and Catch Fire: “These are two gripping and fast-paced psychological dramas from great creative talent we are looking forward to exploring in the coming months. As we continue to establish AMC+ as the home of premium marquee content for adults, these projects are both right in the sweet spot of that brand and value proposition – great stories with unforgettable characters that break through and say something about our broader world. They also are both include members of the Halt and Catch Fire creative team, which should excite viewers as much as it does all of us. Here’s hoping that these respective writers’ rooms are indeed the things that get us to the thing.“
LaValle’s novel The Devil in Silver (pick up a copy HERE) had the following description:
Pepper is a rambunctious big man, minor-league troublemaker, working-class hero (in his own mind), and, suddenly, the surprised inmate of a budget-strapped mental institution in Queens, New York. He’s not mentally ill, but that doesn’t seem to matter. He is accused of a crime he can’t quite square with his memory. In the darkness of his room on his first night, he’s visited by a terrifying creature with the body of an old man and the head of a bison who nearly kills him before being hustled away by the hospital staff. It’s no delusion: The other patients confirm that a hungry devil roams the hallways when the sun goes down. Pepper rallies three other inmates in a plot to fight back: Dorry, an octogenarian schizophrenic who’s been on the ward for decades and knows all its secrets; Coffee, an African immigrant with severe OCD, who tries desperately to send alarms to the outside world; and Loochie, a bipolar teenage girl who acts as the group’s enforcer. Battling the pill-pushing staff, one another, and their own minds, they try to kill the monster that’s stalking them. But can the Devil die?
The Devil in Silver brilliantly brings together the compelling themes that spark all of Victor LaValle’s radiant fiction: faith, race, class, madness, and our relationship with the unseen and the uncanny. More than that, it’s a thrillingly suspenseful work of literary horror about friendship, love, and the courage to slay our own demons.
How does The Devil in Silver sound to you? Would you watch a show (on AMC and/or AMC+) that deals with this subject matter? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
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