Murder lover Bill Hader sets Jonestown project
Condolences to Martin Scorsese, whose Jonestown project was unceremoniously killed at Continental Studios. It looks like Bill Hader got the jump on him, as it was announced today the Saturday Night Live alum is developing a series centered on the Jonestown massacre for HBO. Hader will co-write and serve as co-showrunner on the project with Daniel Zelman (Damages). According to Variety, Hader will direct and potentially star in the series.
In the 1970s, preacher Jim Jones moved his congregation, the Peoples Temple, to Guyana, establishing the Peoples Temple Agricultural Project; the settlement resulted in tragedy after the shooting of a visiting U.S. congressman and the murder-suicide of over 900 members via poison. Even beyond Scorsese's fictional pitch on The Studio, the Jonestown cult has been the subject of fascination for Hollywood. Vince Gilligan was reportedly developing an HBO Jonestown series way back in 2016. Leonardo DiCaprio was cast in a Jim Jones biopic in 2021, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt was attached to play him in an entirely different film opposite Chloë Grace Moretz in 2022.
We don't yet know what angle Bill Hader's Jonestown project will take, but the budding television auteur is undeniably drawn to darker subject matter. In his acclaimed series Barry, he starred as a soldier-turned-hitman. One of his biggest post-SNL roles was playing the adult Richie in the Stephen King horror It Chapter Two. And he'll next lend his voice to one of fiction's most irredeemable maniacs, The Cat In The Hat. But Hader comes by the darkness honestly. He has a documented fascination with true crime and has spoken often about his love of Dateline, and Snapped, and Forensic Files. Will he bring his signature sense of humor to this latest dark subject matter? A real-life tragedy is harder to make funny, but we'll see what Hader comes up with.
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Associated Press
20 minutes ago
- Associated Press
'Chespirito: Sin Querer Queriendo' is a tribute to the Mexican comedian who shaped a generation
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Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
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Your readers might be astounded to learn how rarely that is the case with long-running series. What is it like going into a scene like the meeting between Tula and Desmond Hart? It can be many thing depending on the actor and how they work and how much contact you've had. If you were doing a play, you'd have sat down and talked about it like having therapy. But the way this was it was like having that real encounter. I don't know if you've watched any reality shows were people are reunited or united with their long-lost parent, and it doesn't go as either of them expect. In Travis' head, which I'm sure was born of the preparation he had done, he was absolutely driven with anger and resentment. And I went into it thinking, "My darling, dear lost child." That so often happens with family encounters. Each person goes into it assuming the other person thinks like they do, and there's that appalling realization that you come at something from polar-opposite positions. 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The Onion
3 hours ago
- The Onion
Everything Known About The New ‘Harry Potter' Series So Far
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