The Supernatural Horror Novel TURN OF THE SCREW is Being Adapted Into a TV Series

The 1898 supernatural horror novel written by Henry James, Turn of the Screw, is getting a TV series adaptation thanks to Freeform.

The project is being developed by Alexandra McNally (Under the Dome) and Josh Berman (Drop Dead Diva, CSI) and as you might expect the twisty Gothic soap is being reimagined for modern times.

When talking about the story, Berman said that “The Turn of the Screw is one of the scariest novels of all time. Yet the themes are as relevant today as they were more than a century ago.”

The series will follow Elena, “a Mexican-American nanny who is hired to care for the two children of a widowed-father at their summer home on idyllic Bainbridge Island. It seems like the perfect job with potential for a ‘happily ever after’ ending, but things take a sinister turn when Elena begins seeing ghosts and her grip on what is real and what is not blurs.”

Here’s the official description from the book:

A very young woman's first job: governess for two weirdly beautiful, strangely distant, oddly silent children, Miles and Flora, at a forlorn estate...An estate haunted by a beckoning evil.

Half-seen figures who glare from dark towers and dusty windows- silent, foul phantoms who, day by day, night by night, come closer, ever closer. With growing horror, the helpless governess realizes the fiendish creatures want the children, seeking to corrupt their bodies, possess their minds, own their souls...

But worse-much worse- the governess discovers that Miles and Flora have no terror of the lurking evil.

For they want the walking dead as badly as the dead want them.

I can’t help but think that this project was inspired by the success of Netflix’s Haunting of Hill House. It’d be great if the quality of Turn The Screw ended up being as great, but Freeform has its limitations. Regardless, I’ll be looking forward to seeing how this turns out.