Amazon Developing ‘The Horror of Dolores Roach’; Creator Aaron Mark Strikes First-Look Deal With Blumhouse Television & Opens Virtual Writers’ Room With Dara Resnik
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EXCLUSIVE: The Horror of Dolores Roach, Blumhouse Television’s drama series adaptation of the Gimlet podcast, is in development at Amazon with a virtual writers’ room set up.
Dara Resnik, co-creator of Apple’s Home Before Dark, has boarded the project as showrunner and will work alongside podcast creator Aaron Mark, who has signed a first-look deal with Blumhouse.
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Blumhouse won the rights to adapt the podcast last year in a competitive situation. The Horror of Dolores Roach is based on Mark’s one-woman play Empanada Loca, which starred Daphne Rubin-Vega, who broke through in the Broadway production of Rent and is set to star in feature In The Heights.
Mark, who is behind off-Broadway horror plays Squeamish and Another Medea, is adapting the series from his own script, along with Rubin-Vega, who recently starred in The CW’s Katy Keene. The Horror of Dolores Roach, which is co-produced with Gimlet Pictures, is the first project as part of his first-look television and film deal with Blumhouse.
The Horror of Dolores Roach is a grotesque Sweeney Todd-inspired tale of Eat or Be Eaten; a macabre urban legend of love, betrayal, weed, gentrification, cannibalism, and survival of the fittest. It follows the indomitable Dolores Roach, who returns to a New York City neighborhood that has changed drastically during the sixteen years she has been in prison. Her boyfriend missing, her family long gone, Dolores is recognized only by an old stoner friend, Luis, who gives Dolores room and board and lets her give massages for cash in the basement apartment under his dilapidated empanada shop.
When the promise of her newfound stability is quickly threatened, ‘Magic Hands Dolores’ is driven to extremes to survive — leaving in her wake a string of strangled massage clients. In the face of unexpected professional success, Dolores and Luis become dangerously symbiotic, and Luis must unleash his own particular predilections.
Jason Blum, Marci Wiseman and Jeremy Gold of Blumhouse Television and Chris Giliberti and Justin McGoldrick of Gimlet Pictures will executive produce.
It is the latest high-profile television project for Blumhouse, which produced Showtime’s The Loudest Voice, starring Russell Crowe and Ethan Hawke’s The Good Lord Bird.
Gimlet Pictures, headed by Giliberti, is the film and TV arm of podcast network Gimlet Media, which was purchased in February by music streaming service Spotify for $230 million.
Mark is repped by ICM, Industry Entertainment, and Felker Toczek Suddleson Abramson, Resnik is repped by Grandview and Gang, Tyre, Ramer, Brown & Passman and Rubin-Vega is repped by Untitled Entertainment and Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz.
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