HBO drinks the Vince Gilligan Kool-Aid for the story of the Jonestown massacre.
Vince Gilligan is developing a limited series about cult leader Jim Jones for HBO. Raven is based on the nonfiction book Raven: The Untold Story of Jim Jones and His People by journalist Tim Reiterman, who survived the 1978 event in Gyuana.
The series reunites Gilligan with Michelle MacLaren, the duo who won two best drama series Emmy Awards as executive producers of Breaking Bad. Gilligan also co-created the prequel, Better Call Saul, which is up for its second straight Best Drama Series Emmys.
Raven will be executive produced by actress Octavia Spencer who directed episodes of Game of Thrones. She is also helming the upcoming '70s porn series from David Simon, The Deuce.
Jones formed the religious organization Peoples Temple Agricultural Project in the 1950s. He moved his followers to a remote area in northwestern Guyana in 1977. The area was known as "Jonestown." On November 18, 1978, 918 people died at Jonestown in what Jones called a "revolutionary suicide." The mass suicide/mass murder was the largest single loss of U.S. civilian life in a deliberate act in modern history until 9/11.
Raven joins true-crime-inspired projects like HBO's The Jinx, FX's American Crime Story: People v. O.J. Simpson and Netflix's Making a Murderer. The Weinstein Co. recently announced that it will produce the limited series Waco, about Branch Davidian cult leader David Koresh. That series will star Taylor Kitsch.
SOURCE: VARIETY
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