Hollywood-watchers report that work is underway on adapting the Hans Rodionoff / Giffen / Breccia graphic novel Lovecraft (2003). The adaptation is mooted as a possible costume horror-drama which “will take place in the 1920s”. Sounds good, though the first sixth of the 130-page book is actually set in the 1890s with Lovecraft as a boy, which would entail two sets of period costumes. But I guess the zillion TV-series now being made have produced a thriving behind-the-scenes trade in costumes-and-props, and that a Lovecraft adaptation could be cost-effectively costumed with cast-offs from the likes of Babylon Berlin and Penny Dreadful.

The Lovecraft graphic novel then goes on to feature the adult Lovecraft as the central character. It’s very much a “his monsters and cultists are real” gory fantasy-horror rather any kind of straight bio-book. “Real” in the sense that, for example, in one scene Lovecraft brains a hostile cultist to death with his typewriter. It’s a book that has many good moments in the first half, but in the end the art outshines the baggy story — and it doesn’t help that the dialogue often seems stilted or clunkily expository.

However, the TV writers have previously worked on something called Game of Thrones and thus have landed a “multi-year deal with Netflix”. So they obviously have the talent to hammer out the flaws in the book. My guess would be that, if not a movie, Lovecraft could become a five-part mini-series destined for late-night screening in the run-up to Halloween 2021? There’s no politics in the book, though doubtless there will have to be all sorts of politically-correct changes and slantings made before it can be allowed to reach the screen. Still, if the project can negotiate the inevitable leftist whining without being ruined, then I have a hunch it might even be the first substantial big-budget TV depiction of Lovecraft-as-character?