Tatiana Maslany (Orphan Black) is set to star in a brand new show for Amazon MGM Studios, one that essentially sounds like a sexy take on The Babadook. Yes, really. Maslany has been tapped to star in and produce a new dark comedy pilot for the studio titled The Nightbeast, per Deadline. The show will see Maslany star as a mom who ends up having an affair with the monster in her son’s closet. We can’t make this stuff up, but someone did.
As for who came up with it, the show hails from Leah Rachel (Chambers) and Travis Jackson (Hemlock Grove). Peter Warren, Justin Levy, Fred Berger, Brian Kavanaugh-Jones and Kristen Campo are on board as executive producers, with Jamie Babbit (Only Murders in the Building, Russian Doll) set to direct. The outlet also has a more detailed synopsis for the show, which reads as follows:
“[The Nightbeast] follows a young mother who is unsatisfied with her seemingly perfect suburban life, so she begins an affair with the boogeyman in her son’s closet – a surprisingly sexy man called the Nightbeast. But this harmless affair she thought to be a figment of her imagination begins to have unexpected consequences, as her two worlds increasingly begin to collide in this seductive, darkly comedic tale.”
Amazon purchased MGM in 2022 and has been making use of the horror titles in the studio’s library. The studio is also currently developing a Poltergeist TV series, for example. The safe assumption is that if the pilot goes well, The Nightbeast will be picked up for a full season, likely airming on Prime Video and/or MGM+. But a series commitment has not been handed out at this time so it may be a little bit before we find out whether or not Amazon actually wants to move forward beyond a pilot for this one. We’ll see how it shakes out.
Maslany, for her part, has been quite busy as of late. She recently starred in Marvel’s She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, in addition to her work on the animated series Invincible. The actress is best known for her work on the series Orphan Black, for which she won an Emmy in 2016. Maslany is also no stranger to horror, as some of her earliest credits were George A. Romero’s Diary of the Dead and Stir of Echoes: The Homecoming. Maslany was also recently cast in Oz Perkins’ upcoming film The Keeper.
The Nightbeast does not currently have a release date but it is in the early stages, so stay tuned. For more, be sure to check out or list of ten creepy movies that don’t rely on blood.
