Mike Flanagan Says THE HAUNTING OF BLY MANOR is Still Set To Debut This Year

With TV and film productions being shut down for an extended period of time, it’s been hard to tell what projects that have been in development will still get released this year, and what projects are being pushed back.

For those of you who are fans of Netflix’s The Haunting of Hill House, you’ll be happy to learn that creator and director Mike Flanagan confirmed that the second season, The Haunting of Bly Manor, is still actually on track to debut on Netflix later this year! That makes me happy!

The horror series is one of the lucky projects that was able to wrap shooting before productions were supposed to shut down. During a recent interview with the ReelBlend podcast, Flanagan said:

“I don’t expect it to be delayed one bit. We didn’t really miss a step, believe it or not. We had already wrapped before the whole COVID shutdown hit all the productions. We had a couple of weeks where we had to kind of figure out how to continue post remotely. But my post team also, you know, where I’ve been with now, my whole career, they cracked it real fast and we’ve been doing everything on these virtual sessions.

“I think Netflix, they haven’t announced when it’s coming out. They’ve got their own plan. But we’ve been jamming through post. It’s been going great. It’s definitely later this year. It’s not going to get kicked off into 2021, or anything. Everything’s on schedule.“

The Haunting of Bly Manor is said to be an adaptation of the 1898 novel by Henry James, The Turn of the Screw. The book tells the story of a governess, who will be played by Victoria Pedretti, who is hired to look after a pair of siblings whose parents had died. However, several ghosts around their manor house exhibit a supernatural hold over the children and the governess starts seeing the ghosts, and is terrorized.

The director also previously revealed that the second season will adapt "dozens" of James’ stories as well. He explains:

"The thing I have access to, that no other adaptation of The Turn of to the Screw has, is the rest of Henry James’ ghost stories. I get to use all of them. The Turn of the Screw has been adapted so many times. We know how perfectly it fits into a feature film format. We're doing a whole season of television. The Turn of the Screw is only one of a dozen stories that we're telling. All Henry James; all thematically linked. 

"I think of Turning of the Screw as the backbone of this season – the through line that carries us from beginning to end. But we get to go off into The Jolly Corner and The Romance of Certain Old Clothes, and so many other of these wonderful ghost stories that people haven't seen adapted before. It's all wrapped up in what seems to be familiar, but that familiarity goes away really early in the first episode. It says, 'We're off on a whole other road.'"

"It’s been really exciting to have this much bigger canvas, because you're not going to do better than The Innocents anyway."

The Innocents is in reference to the 1961 movie based on the same novel. This is great and the new season is also bringing back a lot of the original cast, who will all be playing different characters. So far the cast also includes Henry Thomas, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, and possibly Carla Gugino.

Flanagan also said this new season is going to be “much scarier than season one.” I can’t wait to watch this!