Dark creators making a horror show about migrants coming to America for Netflix
Netflix shepherded the German sci-fi thriller Dark to American audiences, turning a very strange show that likely wouldn’t have turned many heads outside of its native country into a global hit. The show’s success resulted in a second season, as well as an overall deal between Netflix and creators Jantje Friese and Baran bo Odar. Now, the fruits of that deal are beginning to sprout.
Birth.Movies.Death reports that Friese and bo Odar are making another horror series for Netflix, this one being a period horror story following European migrants on their way to America in 1899. The tale unfolds on a steamship that discovers another ship adrift in the ocean, and, according to Netflix, “what they find on board will turn their passage to the promised land into a horrifying nightmare.”
The setting and timeline evokes AMC’s recent The Terror, but the themes are plucked right from today’s political landscape, where right-wing pundits the world over bloviate about the need to secure borders against the “very bad people” that want to “infiltrate” our way of life. According to a statement from the creators, the show centers around “the question of what unites us and what divides us. And how fear can be a trigger for the latter.”
As tends to often be the case with sensitive, divisive issues, horror is the perfect vessel for which to explore them.