Coming off the success of eerie miniseries Midnight Mass (2021), Flanagan will return to take the reigns on latest project The Midnight Club in 2022 – and we can’t wait to binge our way through it.
Master of horror and frequent Netflix collaborator, Mike Flanagan, has built quite the reputation for himself over the last few years. With productions such as Doctor Sleep (2019) and The Haunting anthology under his belt, he has rightfully gathered a popular following amongst horror fanatics. It really is no surprise that audiences are keen to dig into wherever Flanagan sprinkles his supernatural magic next.
Coming off the success of eerie miniseries Midnight Mass (2021), Flanagan will return to take the reigns on latest project The Midnight Club in 2022 – and we can’t wait to binge our way through it.
What is The Midnight Club?
The Midnight Club is based on Christopher Pike’s 1994 mystery-thriller novel of the same name. Set in a Rotterdam hospice, The Midnight Club will follow a group of terminally ill teenagers who meet together every midnight to share spooky tales with one another.
One night, the friends make a pact stating that whoever dies first will do everything they can to communicate from the afterlife. Of course, things are never always so simple with death and soon, strange occurrences start to take place.
The series consists of 10 episodes with production having began in March 2021 and concluded the following September in British Colombia. If the show follows the same format as The Haunting of Hill House (2018) and The Haunting of Bly Manor (2020), fans could expect that each episode will likely follow a one story per episode narrative.
Flanagan tends to incorporate a nonlinear method of storytelling into his work where he expands on various arcs across time-jumps and flashbacks. Viewers may similarly want to keep an eye out for episode 5 – which has previously marked a major revelation or turning point in Flanagan’s other shows.
There is no scheduled release date for the series as of yet. However, Flanagan’s TV projects have all premiered around late-September/early-October ahead of Halloween. Given the genre of The Midnight Club, it could follow the same pattern.
Who Will Star in The Midnight Club?
Flanagan is known to have a budding list of recurring actors on his productions. Fresh from Midnight Mass, Annarah Cymone (who played Mayor Scarborough’s daughter, Leeza) and Igby Rigney (who played Riley’s teen brother, Warren) are set to make their reappearance in the Flanaverse as series regulars.
Other Crockett Island residents joining the two are Crystal Balint (who played Dolly, Leeza’s mother), Matt Biedel (island handyman, Sturge), Patricia Drake (native islander, Joanie), Robert Longstreet (town drunk, Joe), and Zach Gilford (Riley Flynn). Samantha Sloyan (who played Midnight Mass antagonist, Bev Keane), will additionally be marking her fourth collaboration with Flanagan – Sloyan also co-starred in Hush (2016) and The Haunting of Hill House.
Making her Flanaverse debut is scream queen and A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) star, Heather Langenkamp. Perhaps best known for playing Nancy Thompson, Langenkamp is horror royalty and will seemingly be an integral character in grounding the story. The actress will be taking on the role of the “enigmatic doctor who runs the hospice,” which Flanagan shared in a tweet back in 2021.
Related: Netflix’s Horrific Midnight Mass Ending Explained
What’s Next for Mike Flanagan?
In 2019, Flanagan partnered with independent production company Intrepid Pictures – who had produced several of Flanagan’s features in the years prior. At around the same time, a multi-year deal was formed with Netflix to develop exclusive TV content for the streaming platform. Titles include: The Haunting anthology, Midnight Mass, The Midnight Club, and upcoming Edgar Allen Poe adaptation The Fall of the House of Usher.
The latter of which is due to begin production on January 24th and stars an ensemble of familiar and fresh faces alike; the project will feature a modern retelling of several Poe stories. The Fall of the House of Usher will be the fifth limited series created under Intrepid Pictures deal with Netflix. Flanagan will direct 4 of 8 episodes.
Continuing the partnership, it was announced in July 2021 that Flanagan and Intrepid Pictures producer, Trevor Macy, would be adapting comic series Something is Killing the Children. The show is in early stages right now with the pair co-writing the pilot but Macy will be jumping into the showrunner position. The official synopsis is:
“When the children of Archer’s Peak—a sleepy town in the heart of America—begin to go missing, everything seems hopeless. Most children never return, but the ones that do have terrible stories—impossible details of terrifying creatures that live in the shadows. Their only hope of finding and eliminating the threat is the arrival of a mysterious stranger, one who believes the children and claims to be the only one who sees what they can see.”
With more than enough to keep him busy, Flanagan is not only directing two episodes of The Midnight Club, he is concurrently developing a film based on another Christopher Pike novel, The Season of the Passage, for Universal Pictures. Little is known about the project at this time but the novel’s official premise is:
“Dr. Lauren Wagner was a celebrity. She was involved with the most exciting adventure mankind had ever undertaken: a manned expedition to Mars. The whole world admired and respected her. But Lauren knew fear. Inside – voices entreating her to love them. Outside – the mystery of the missing group that had gone before her. The dead group. But were they simply dead? Or something else?”
