Deadline is reporting that Courtney B. Vance (American Crime Story: The People vs. OJ Simpson), Aunjanue Ellis (Quantico) and Elizabeth Debicki (Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2) have signed on to star in HBO’s Lovecraft Country, a new straight-to-series drama from Jordan Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions and J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot.
Based on the 2016 novel by Matt Ruff and penned by Misha Green (Underground), the series focuses on 25-year-old Atticus Black (Jonathan Majors), who joins up with his friend Letitia (Jurnee Smollett-Bell) and his Uncle George to embark on a road trip across 1950s Jim Crow America to find his missing father. This begins a struggle to survive and overcome both the racist terrors of white America and the malevolent spirits that could be ripped from a Lovecraft paperback.
Vance is set to play Uncle George Black, who is described as “more like a father to Atticus. Warm, funny, and well read, he was the first to introduce Atticus to the wonderful and strange world of pulp novels. As the publisher of the Safe Negro Travel Guide he’s been on enough adventures to understand there’s no place like home.”
Debicki will portray Christina Braithwhite, “the only daughter of Samuel Braithwhite, the leader of a secret order calling themselves the ‘Sons of Adam’. She’s gone to great lengths to earn her father’s respect, to no avail. She’s going to pave her own path to power, and she’s going to use Atticus and his family to do it.”
Ellis meanwhile has been cast as Hippolyta Black, “George’s wife, Atticus’s aunt, and a star gazer. She’s been a housewife most of her life with dreams of getting into some adventures of her own, despite her husband’s misgivings. Her itch for adventure will eventually, literally and figuratively, take her to the stars and beyond.”
Peele, Abrams, Green, Ben Stephenson, David Knoller and Yann Demange are executive producing Lovecraft Country, with Demange also directing the first episode.
