Showtime has ordered “Let the Right One In,” an adaptation of the 2008 Swedish movie (itself adapted from a novel), to series. This version will star Demián Bichir, Anika Noni Rose, Grace Gummer, Madison Taylor Baez, Kevin Carroll, Ian Foreman and Jacob Buster.
Andrew Hinderaker wrote the pilot and will serve as showrunner. He’ll executive produce along with Seith Mann, who directed the pilot and will also direct additional episodes.
“Let the Right One In” has a 10-episode order. It will begin production in New York City in early 2022.
The series version centers on Mark (Bichir) and his daughter Eleanor (Baez), whose lives were changed forever 10 years earlier when she was turned into a vampire. Locked in at age 12, perhaps forever, Eleanor lives a closed-in life, able to go out only at night, while her father does his best to provide her with the human blood she needs to stay alive.
“Let the Right One In” is executive produced by Hinderaker, Mann and Marty Adelstein and Becky Clements for Tomorrow Studios, which is a partnership between Adelstein and ITV Studios. Alissa Bachner serves as co-executive producer. Bichir will serve as a producer on the series.
The 2008 film was directed by Tomas Alfredson off a screenplay by John Ajvide Lindqvist (who also wrote the novel). The movie, which starred Kåre Hedebrant, Lina Leandersson and Per Ragnar, centered on Oskar (Hedebrant), an overlooked and bullied boy who finds love and revenge through Eli (Leandersson), a beautiful but peculiar girl.
Showtime made a few casting headlines earlier this week. For starters, Betty Gilpin joined the premium-cable channel’s “Three Women” series. (The other two women are DeWanda Wise and Shailene Woodley.)
Gilpin will play Lina, a homemaker in Indiana who, after a decade in a passionless marriage, embarks on an affair that quickly becomes all-consuming and transforms her life. The series, an adaptation of the bestseller by Lisa Taddeo, is described as an “intimate, haunting portrayal of American female desire” centered on three women “on a crash course to radically overturn their lives.”
Additionally, Kathryn Hahn was cast to play Joan Rivers in Showtime’s limited series “The Comeback Girl.” Yeah, that one’s the biggie.