Justice League Dark and a Spinoff of The Shining Are Coming to HBO Max
Disney+ won't be the only streamer with a major superhero TV show. Warner Bros. announced on Thursday afternoon that J.J. Abrams is making a Justice League Dark series for the upcoming HBO Max streaming service. He’ll also be overseeing a spin-off of Stephen King’s The Shining and an original drama about crime in the 1970s Southwest called Duster.
The Justice League Dark series technically does not have a final title yet, but it will focus on characters from the DC superhero universe’s more mystical, supernatural side, like Zatanna, Swamp Thing, and John Constantine. There has been chatter about bringing the team to the screen for years now, as at various points Doug Liman and Guillermo Del Toro were supposed to make a big-screen version. As with everything DC-related these days, it’s unclear what—if any—shared canon the upcoming series will have with the core DC films like Wonder Woman and Birds of Prey.
Overlook, Abrams’s The Shining spin-off, seems like it will have a lot in common with Hulu’s King-inspired anthology series Castle Rock, which Abrams and his production company Bad Robot also had a hand in. Castle Rock’s show runners Dustin Thomason and Scott Brown are moving over to HBO Max to write and produce Overlook, a 10-episode drama about the infamous hotel at the center of King’s 1977 novel and Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 movie. The Hollywood Reporter writes that the series will feature “iconic characters from the horror thriller,” which is intriguing since most of the book’s small cast of characters either die or were ghosts from the beginning. (Please, let there be an episode about the man in the dog costume.)
Finally, there’s Duster, which was Abrams’s original idea that he’s co-writing with The Walking Dead’s LaToya Morgan. The series will follow a getaway driver for a growing crime syndicate.
HBO Max is less than a Quibi away, as the service will launch at some yet-to-be-specified point in May, assuming nothing changes (for coronavirus-related reasons or otherwise.) None of the three just-announced shows will be available at launch, obviously, nor do they have estimated premiere dates at this time. Duster, Overlook, and the Justice League Dark series are the first three shows Warner Bros. has ordered to series from Abrams since the Rise of Skywalker director’s Bad Robot production company made a sweeping five-year deal with the studio.
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Originally Appeared on GQ
