Back in June, Ryan Murphy announced that the second season of his American Crime Story anthology series would be about the murder of Gianni Versace instead of the planned story about Hurricane Katrina, and director Anthony Hemingway said later in July that the Katrina season had stalled because Murphy may have underestimated how complex the two seasons would be. Now, Deadline is reporting that work on American Crime Story: Katrina is once again moving ahead, with Murphy and FX retooling the project to be an adaptation of Sheri Fink’s Five Days At Memorial instead of whatever they were originally planning.
The book is about how the aftermath of the hurricane hit New Orleans’ Memorial Medical Center, the staff of which decided to euthanize a number of the most critically ill patients after the hospital was left without power for days. Sarah Paulson, who had signed on to play an unknown role in the previous incarnation of Katrina, is set to play Dr. Anna Pou, the head of the hospital’s medical staff. Other cast members who were supposed to appear in the old Katrina, including Annette Bening, Dennis Quaid, and Matthew Broderick, are no longer attached, but the producers are hoping to find new characters for them to play.