Mario Van Peebles’s paranormal drama Superstition has received a straight series order from Syfy.
NBCUniversal’s cable television platform for the more colorful genres in Syfy has procured an interesting addition to its lineup from someone not typically associated with colorful genres. Indeed, news has arrived that actor/director Mario Van Peebles will be the primary force behind an upcoming Syfy series that explores the more macabre and paranormal aspects of New Orleans.
Syfy has announced a straight-to-series 13-episode order for a television project titled Superstition in which Mario Van Peebles will serve in the trifecta position of writer, director and cast member. The show takes place in a particularly spooky (albeit fictional) part of the Big Easy in a funeral home owned by the Mosley family. Appropriately, the Mosleys are keepers of their remote hamlet’s dark history. With the area described as a “landing patch” for an ancient evil entity called the Dredge, expect storylines centered on haunted houses, eccentric locals and obligatory shoots in the area’s famously unique above-ground graveyards.
Van Peebles, who entered the industry as a child actor, eventually achieving acclaim as the star and director of 1991’s bellwether contemporary gangster film New Jack City, has generally put his vast acting career on the periphery, working mostly as a writer and director, notably helming an eclectic array of television fare such as Empire, Roots, Hand of God, Once Upon a Time, Nashville, Lost and Sons of Anarchy. With horror drama Superstition, Van Peebles – acting as writer/director/actor – fields somewhat new genre territory. However, he’ll have help from a showrunner experienced with that stuff in Laurence Andries, whose resume as a producer includes Supernatural, Alias, Six Feet Under and Millennium. As Van Peebles enthusiastically muses:
“The incredible things we used to do in independent film, we can now do in television. This is truly a golden era for exciting, provocative television.”
Superstition is set to begin production of its 13-episode run in early 2017, with plans to air the show later that year on Syfy.