Mike Flanagan Teases The Ring & The Grudge DNA in Netflix’s THE HAUNTING OF BLY MANOR
Mike Sprague
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Netflix and Mike Flanagan’s The Haunting of Bly Manor is based on Henry James’ novella The Turn of the Screw. But it isn’t a straight adaptation. And here’s why.
Flanagan told Mick Garris at Fantasia Film Festival: “It’s not about doing a straight adaptation anymore – that’s already been done. We’d cover two episodes, and then we’d have eight episodes of filler. I need to make a 10-hour version of this.”
So rather than stretch out James’ 42,000-word novella, the new season will be an amalgam of his work with episodes titles that serve as an homage.
He adds: “When the show launches, you’ll see each episode is actually the title of one of his stories. They’re all braided together and made to work in one (hopefully) cohesive story. His language is not something that’s as easy to relate to for a contemporary reader or viewer. And certainly not easy to adapt. There’s a story Henry James wrote called ‘The Romance of Certain Old Clothes,’ which is a phenomenal short ghost story, and if you strip away all of the proper language and all of the context of the time, underneath it, you see the DNA of The Ring, The Grudge. They’re all there. And he was one of the first to be playing with them.”
The Haunting of Bly Manor stars Victoria Pedretti, Henry Thomas, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, and Kate Siegel from The Haunting of Hill House with T’Nia Miller, Catherine Parker, Rahul Kohli, Benjamin Evan Ainsworth, Amelie Smith, Amelia Eve, and Tahirah Sharif. It hits Netflix on October 9th. Are you excited? Let us know what you think in the comments below or on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram!
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