Amazing News: TRUE DETECTIVE’s Cary Fukunaga Signs On To Direct THE ALIENIST

Well, this has to be the best news I've heard all week: True Detective director Cary Fukunaga has signed on to produce and direct an adaptation of Caleb Carr's turn of the century serial killer thriller, The Alienist. If you're a True Detective fan who's also read The Alienist, you don't need to be told what a brilliant pairing this is.

Here's how the press release describes the novel (via The Wrap):

Set in the tenements and mansions of Gilded Age New York City (late-‘1800s), Carr’s 1994 novel tells the story of Dr. Laszlo Kreizler who, with the help of newspaper reporter John Moore and police commissioner Theodore Roosevelt, uses the emerging discipline of psychology to track down one of New York City’s first serial killers.

That description's not wrong, but it also doesn't convey how deeply freaky Carr's novel is. Crime scenes are Jack The Ripper-level gruesome, with victims (some of whom are children, some of whom are prostitutes, some of whom are both) dissected and left posed by the novel's Big Bad. Set against the backdrop of 1896 New York City, The Alienist is a seedy, macabre, often hopeless tale...of course Fukunaga's the guy to put this on film.

Fukunaga will executive produce and direct, and he's paired with Anonymous Content - the production house responsible for True Detective and Fukunaga's upcoming Beasts With No Nation, which is set to debut sometime this year via Netflix - to put it all together. No word on a timeline (BURNING QUESTION: will this come before, during or after Fukunaga's two-part adaptation of Stephen King's It?) or what network will host the show, but you can rest assured we'll be updating you as more develops on this one.

Get excited, people. This has the potential to be amazing.