TORONTO – Horror master Eli Roth describes the creepy tale at the heart of his Netflix series Hemlock Grove as a “monstrous Twin Peaks.”
The Hostel writer-director makes his first foray into television with the werewolf and vampire-themed murder-mystery later this month.
Hemlock Grove is based on Brian McGreevy’s novel of the same name and revolves around the residents of a former steel town reeling from the death of a 17-year-old girl.
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Roth admits he’d been wary of TV until now, fearing it wouldn’t allow him to make something with the “intensity or violence” he’s known for in big-screen projects.
But the executive producer says the industry is changing and credits premium cable series Game of Thrones and Boardwalk Empire with pushing the boundaries of TV.
All 13 episodes of the made-in-Ontario Hemlock Grove — starring Famke Janssen, Dougray Scott, Bill Skarsgard and Canada’s Landon Liboiron — will be released April 19 on Netflix.
In a conference call Wednesday, Roth said he’d been looking for a TV project for a while.
“The conflict that I always came up against was that, one, I’d never get to do it with the level of intensity or violence that I wanted, but also what makes horror great is that you kill characters at any time and what makes television work is that you have characters that come back week after week,” said Roth.
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