Mockingbird Lane Is Like Hitchcock Directing Harry Potter, Says Showrunner

Mockingbird Lane showrunner Bryan ( Pushing Daisies ) Fuller told the Comic-Con crowd this weekend that he wasn’t afraid of reboots and reimaginings, “only bad ones”.

Describing the new hour-long show – based on the half-hour ’60s sitcom The Munsters – as like if, “Hitchcock was directing a Harry Potter film,” Fuller previewed clips from the pilot to the crowd. The show has yet to been greenlit for a series, but Fuller seems confident: “[NBC is] clearly invested in this show, and they’re invested in doing it in a spectacular fashion.”

According to TVLine , “A sizzle reel of footage from the Mockingbird Lane pilot, which finished shooting three days before the panel, revealed that the series has the auteur’s stamp all over it. Darkly humorous and visually distinctive, the sneak peek featured a scene of a wolfed-out Eddie terrorizing his Boy Scout friends on a camping trip, clever nods to the original series and Eddie Izzard as Grandpa chomping into a lion. Special effects to be added will also allow Lily’s outfit to form out of spiders and for Grandpa to manifest out of rats. ‘It is a darker version of Pushing Daisies,’ said Fuller.”

Fuller also revealed that he was inspired to make Mockingbird Lane after he saw some monster drawings at a Tim Burton exhibit in New York City, and thought, “Why don’t we have a monster family on TV?” He added: “This is about embracing the freak of your family and being proud.”

The show will contain many homages to other classic Universal monsters, and will show how the Munsters came to be living in Mockingbird Lane, where they found their pet dragon Spot, and the origins of the Dragula family car.

Intriguingly Fuller also teased that Pushing Daisies may also rise from the grave in some form: “There is another Pushing Daisies project that is not a comic and that is not a miniseries that we’re working on.”

The Broadway musical, perhaps?

See the new Lily Munster