HBO has announced a new miniseries adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s underrated thriller novel Dark Places, and it’s something that Flynn’s fans have wanted for years. Flynn’s second published novel, Dark Places revolves around the sole survivor of a massacre in rural Kansas and the story deals with themes of the class divide and the Satanic panic that swept the U.S. in the 1980s. When it was published in 2009, Dark Places appeared on The New York Times Best Seller list for two weeks in a row.
Flynn herself is attached to serve as a writer and co-creator on HBO’s adaptation of Dark Places, with Ray Donovan writers Brett Johnson and Guerrin Garder also working on the series. Dark Places was previously adapted into a feature film by writer-director Gilles Paquet-Brenner, but that movie was panned by critics and bombed at the box office. HBO’s limited series is a second chance to do the novel justice in a screen adaptation, especially since Flynn is directly involved in this version.
HBO’s Dark Places Is Overdue After Sharp Objects (& Gone Girl)
The first time Flynn’s work was adapted for the screen was David Fincher’s hit movie version of Gone Girl. Flynn wrote the screenplay adaptation herself and it ended up becoming a great movie that connected with both critics and audiences. After a different writer adapted Dark Places for the big screen and it resulted in failure, HBO turned Flynn’s debut novel Sharp Objects into a limited series. Flynn worked on the writing of this one and it became another Gone Girl-sized hit.
This pattern clearly shows that Flynn adaptations have much more success when they recruit the services of Flynn herself. In the years since, Flynn has continued writing for movies and TV – she co-wrote Widows with Steve McQueen and created the Amazon sci-fi series Utopia – but getting another adaptation of her literary work is a very exciting prospect, given the quality so far. If the Dark Places miniseries is as great as the Gone Girl movie or the Sharp Objects miniseries, then audiences are in for a treat.
What To Expect From HBO’s Dark Places
By adapting the novel as a limited series, HBO’s Dark Places will be able to include a fully fleshed-out retelling of the intricacies of the story. The previous movie adaptation of Dark Places felt rushed and underdeveloped as it crammed all the novel’s plot points into a feature-length runtime. Gone Girl was a more successful adaptation, but it still suffered from the same problem. Dark Places tells its story on two parallel timelines, and a multi-episode TV run will give Flynn the freedom to explore those timelines in the depth they deserve.
