NBC Orders Fear Itself

By Jon Condit
September 25th, 2007

A few weeks back, you may recall Masters of Horror creator Mick Garris made the semi-official announcement that Lionsgate were officially on board for a third season of the popular anthology show (“Lionsgate Behind Masters 3!” – August, 2007). Today it was announced that NBC has reworked Masters with Garris to create a new show, just without the freedom of pay cable.

The show will be called Fear Itself and it will follow the same format as Masters of Horror and Masters of Science Fiction, both of which were produced by Industry Entertainment, who are also producing Fear Itself; 13 60-minute films directed by some of the biggest names in the genre.

Since its going to be on broadcast television, we can’t expect to see too much when it comes to hardcore horror, but perhaps that will force filmmakers to actually create short films that are, get this, scary.

One trade article I read says that Lionsgate will be drawing from their “deep bench of horror filmmakers” to direct episodes of the show, which means there’s a damn fine chance we could be seeing Uli Lommel movies in primetime soon. Now that is horror.

- Johnny Butane