In news whose only downside is that it makes that Beetlejuice sequel seem even less likely, Winona Ryder has signed on to star in a new Netflix supernatural series written and directed by the Wayward Pines team of Matt and Ross Duffer. This will be Ryder’s first major TV series role. (As we previously reported, the series is is being executive produced by A Night At The Museum’s Shawn Levy.)
The Equalizer’s David Harbour has also signed on for a leading role in the series, which is being described as “a love letter to the ’80s classics that captivated a generation.” Specifically, based on the series description, it’s a tribute to supernatural series like The Hitchhiker, Tales From The Darkside, and the revived version of The Twilight Zone that ran from 1985-1989, although this series will not be an anthology. Instead, as one might expect from the Pines crew, the story blends sinister government experiments with supernatural elements, with “one very strange little girl” thrown in presumably as a tribute to Ryder’s filmography.
Ryder will play Joyce, a working-class single mother who must face said sinister forces when her son disappears. Harbour will co-star as the “weary and disheveled” police chief tasked with investigating the disappearance. As implied by the series’ previous title, Montauk, all this goes down in the early ’80s in Montauk, Long Island—site of a real-life mystery, the Montauk Monster, which was said to have washed ashore from the real-life federal research facility located nearby.