Drew Barrymore and her Flower Films partner Nancy Juvonen are producing a female-centric horror anthology for TV that will be written and directed entirely by women, Deadline reports. The CW's head of development Gaye Hirsch is developing Black Rose Anthology, and Scream: The TV Series showrunner Jill Blotevogel is executive producing and writing the pilot.
Deadline says the anthology will feature "vignettes about guilt, jealousy, repression, paranoia, insanity, sexual obsession, and survival" — that right away doesn't sound like just standard horror fare.
From her early days in Firestarter to her ill-fated scene in Scream and her latest brain-eating hilarity on Santa Clarita Diet, Barrymore has a history of doing horror right. It's sometimes surprising, considering how bright and sunshiny our own editor-at-large seems in real life. (Her production company is called Flower Films!) But when the CW announced the project this week it sounded perfect. There's no word on whether Barrymore might appear onscreen in any of the episodes, showing off that classic scream of hers.
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While women in all genres of movies and TV are still up against a glass ceiling, this is one huge opportunity in the traditionally male-dominated horror sector. As Ryan Murphy has proved with American Horror Story, the small screen can be every bit as scary as the big one. The CW has also been a great home for creepy TV ever since the dawn of Supernatural.
The only downside of this announcement? Our anticipation of the inevitable sexist trolls who probably haven't yet exhausted themselves with all their hating of the all-female Lord of the Flies movie in development. Sigh.