Yahoo Movies Chucky TV show will spotlight fan-favorite characters, creator says
Back in June, longtime Child’s Play writer-director Don Mancini teased a TV series based on the film franchise about a killer doll named Chucky. Now Mancini, whose other credits include NBC’s Hannibal and Syfy’s Channel Zero, has let slip a few details about the project, on the most recent episode of the horror podcast Post Mortem With Mick Garris.
“Just from having worked on Hannibal and Channel Zero… I saw an opportunity to reinvent the franchise yet again,” Mancini told Garris, whose own directing credits include Psycho IV and the upcoming horror anthology Nightmare Cinema. “One of the things that has kept the franchise alive and thriving for so long is that we’ve reinvented it in different ways, by making it a comedy, and then back to horror. But the sheer storytelling real estate of doing eight to 10 episodes… will allow us to delve into characters and relationships in a way that we’re never afforded in just a 90-minute movie. That’s really exciting to me. We’re going to be able to explore different avenues with different characters that are among fan favorites. A lot of times people will say, ‘What’s Tiffany’s backstory?’ and ‘What about Glen or Glenda?’ All these different avenues. Now we have a way of exploring all of this, and that’s really exciting.”
Mancini also revealed his excitement about working with other writers on Chucky scripts.
“One of the things I really loved about working in television was the social aspect of it,” he said. “Because when you write features, it’s so damn lonely and terrifying. When I first came to work on Hannibal, it was my first experience with the writers’ room. I’m like, ‘Wait a minute, every day, we come into a room with a group of other like-minded horror fanatics, and we talk about Hannibal all day, and we get paid for it?’ This didn’t seem like work to me. And so, doing that with Chucky seems really fun, and I am really excited about inviting other very talented writers to come into it, and see what they will bring to it at this stage.”
Listen to Mancini on Post Mortem above.
