Gillian Flynn Returns to HBO with ‘Dark Places’ Limited Series Adaptation

Samantha Bergeson
·2 min read

Gillian Flynn is returning to HBO following “Sharp Objects.”

The author will adapt her novel “Dark Places” into a HBO limited series, as IndieWire can confirm. Variety first reported the announcement.

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Flynn, whose novel “Gone Girl” was adapted in an Oscar-nominated David Fincher film, will serve as co-creator, writer, and co-showrunner with Brett Johnson (“Escape at Dannemora”). Guerrin Gardner is also credited as a co-creator and writer for “Dark Places.”

The 2009 novel follows Libby Day across decades as she revisits the death of her mother and two sisters amid an alleged Satanic killing spree in Kinnakee, Kansas in 1985. While Libby survived, she testified that her teenage brother Ben was the murderer.

Per the logline, “Now, 25 years later, a pair of mother/daughter true crime ‘detectives’ locate a grownup Libby and pump her for details, believing that Ben is innocent. Libby, having spent her youth working the talk show circuit, hopes to once again turn a profit off her tragic history: She’ll reconnect with the players from that night and report her findings — for a fee. As Libby’s search takes her from shabby Missouri strip clubs to abandoned Oklahoma tourist traps, the unimaginable truth emerges, and Libby finds herself right back where she started — on the run from a killer.”

Variety reported that Theresa Kang and Caroline Garity of Blue Marble Pictures will executive produce the HBO limited series in addition to Andrea Iervolino and Monika Bacardi of Iervolino & Lady Bacardi Entertainment.

“Dark Places” was adapted into a feature film distributed by A24 and on DirecTV in 2015 with Charlize Theron starring as Libby. Corey Stoll, Tye Sheridan, Chlo? Grace Moretz, Nicholas Hoult, and Christina Hendricks co-starred, with Gilles Paquet-Brenner writing and directing.

Author Flynn executive-produced Emmy-winning HBO limited series “Sharp Objects,” based on her novel, starring Amy Adams and Sydney Sweeney. “Gone Girl” starred Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike.

“Dark Places” showrunner Flynn also penned Steve McQueen’s film “Widows” and served as showrunner of Prime Video’s “Utopia.” The novelist was previously an Entertainment Weekly journalist.

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