Mike Flanagan Originally Tried To Adapt The Midnight Club In The '90s

gamerant.com:

Already an established genre director, Mike Flanagan made a name for himself in recent years when he brought several gothic horror miniseries to streaming giant Netflix, butThe Midnight Club seems to have been on his radar for decades.

Flanagan's adaptations of The Haunting of Hill House,The Haunting of Bly Manor,and Midnight Mass have brought his work to more mainstream audiences and have created a revival of gothic horror. Now he has more in the works for Netflix after signing a deal with the platform, including an adaptation of The Fall of The House of Usher and the upcoming release of The Midnight Club,based on the YA horror classic of the same name by author Christopher Pike.

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In a recent discussion with Vanity Fair, the director discussed how he had previously attempted to adapt the book in the early 1990s. At the time Flanagan was a college student and avid fan of Pike's work.The Midnight Club resonated with him so much that he wrote a screenplay, created a business plan, and asked friends and family to invest in his passion project. Then he sent his proposal to Pike's publisher. «They sent me a cease and desist letter,» The director said before explaining why the book had such an impact on him. "The Midnight Club was a particular shock to me as a teenager because I thought I was getting this pulpy little YA novella that would be about a spooky Grim Reaper or something. But no, it was about teenagers having to reconcile with terminal diseases and with death. And it didn’t pull its punches there either. It was a real lesson in how you could use genre to talk about very serious things."

Now, after building up his reputation and an impressive portfolio of work,