Warner Bros. has greenlit a trio of new shows from J.J. Abrams for its soon-to-be-launched streaming service, HBO Max, including a DC Comics series and a show related to Stephen King’s The Shining. The shows are the first from Abrams, who signed a major deal with Warner Bros. last fall.
Abrams, who’s best known for helming Star Trek, Star Trek Into Darkness, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, will provide a range of stories for HBO Max through 2024. He’ll be executive producer on all three new shows through his production company, Bad Robot.
The shows in question are Duster, Overlook, and a series based on Justice League Dark. Duster is a crime series set in the 1970s, following a “gutsy getaway driver for a growing crime syndicate who goes from awful to wildly, stupidly, dangerously awful.”
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Overlook will tie into The Shining, and will explore “the untold, terrifying stories of the most famous haunted hotel in American fiction.” The Hollywood Reporter notes that the series will share the same writers that collaborated with Abrams for his Hulu series Castle Rock, which remixed the various works from King. (That show ran for two seasons, but has yet to be renewed for a third). The series will run for 10 episodes, and already reportedly has a writers room set up.
The third, untitled series is based on the characters from DC’s Justice League Dark series, a superhero team that debuted in 2011, featuring characters John Constantine, Madame Xanadu, Deadman, Shade, the Changing Man, and Zatanna.
Warner Bros. has been working on adapting the team for a while — it released an animated film back in 2017, and had brought on Guillermo del Toro (Hellboy, Pacific Rim) to direct a live-action version in 2012. However, he left the project, and the studio brought in Doug Liman (Bourne Identity, Edge of Tomorrow) to direct in 2016, but he left a year later. The studio also reportedly planned to eventually introduce the team in the DC Universe series Swamp Thing, but those plans didn’t come to fruition when that series was abruptly canceled last year.
HBO Max is set to launch sometime next month, and will host a wide range films and television shows from Warner Bros.’ massive content library. In addition to existing shows, it’ll also release its own exclusive content, including a tie-in to Denis Villeneuve’s Dune, an adaptation of Madeline Miller’s Circe, a Green Lantern Arrowverse series, an adaptation of Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash, and others.
