Facebook’s really trying to make good on developing original content for its recently launched streaming platform. In addition to ordering a Chicago-set drama from Kerry Washington and a series inspired by breakout Facebook page Humans Of New York, the social media company is now teaming up with Blumhouse and a couple of True Blood alums on a half-hour drama based in part on a Grimm brothers tale.
The series, titled Sacred Lies and announced via press release, comes from Raelle Tucker and Scott Winant, who worked together on Alan Ball’s supernatural HBO drama. It’s an adaptation of both “The Girl Without Hands”and Stephanie Oakes’ The Sacred Lies Of Minnow Bly. The former is a fairy tale that, although the plot varies depending on the version, usually centers on a young woman whose hands are either chopped off by the devil because her sinless life means he can’t drag her to hell. In some variations, the girl’s hands or arms are cut off because she rejected her father or brother’s sexual advances (just a reminder that this trash fire’s actually been raging for quite a while). Eventually, she marries a king, as fairy tale maidens are wont to do. Oakes’ book also follows a young woman whose hands were cut off as part of some brutal punishment (in this case, not wanting to go along with the cult she was raised in).
Tucker, who will serve as showrunner and co-executive producer, is adapting and updating the stories to create a “young female protagonist we’ve never seen on screen before.” She describes her new lead as “complex, brave, funny…and sometimes dangerous. And she has no hands. But she refuses to let that, or her bizarre, brutal past define her or limit her.” She calls that the “message of our series: no matter what life throws at you—ultimately only you have the power to decide what you believe and what you become.” Tucker previously worked on Jessica Jones and The Returned, while Winant was an executive producer on My So-Called Life and Good Girls Revolt, so it sounds like this team might be able to pull off a truly warped coming-of-age story.
There’s currently no word on when production will begin, but the series will be available via Facebook Watch on mobile, desktop and the site’s TV apps.