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Another season of The Haunting may well still happen, says Mike Flanagan. Horror fans have been keen for more installments of the Netflix anthology series since The Haunting of Bly Manor landed in October 2020 – but with the franchise's co-creator having more recently set his sights on The Midnight Club and The Fall of the House of Usher, its future looked uncertain.
"What makes the Haunting 'The Haunting', and if and how we could re-approach it, is something we talk about pretty frequently because we've always left that door open," the Doctor Sleep director explained at a recent press event at Netflix’s New York City headquarters (via TV Line). "[But] we don't want to do it just to do it."
Later, the filmmaker noted how The Haunting of Hill House, which came out in 2018, was inspired by Shirley Jackson's novel of the same name, while Bly Manor found its inspiration in Henry James's The Turn of the Screw.
"Our thing with The Haunting is that we always wanted it to be primarily based on a piece of classic horror literature, and ideally something that has been adapted before that we can do something different with," Flanagan added. "When we think of The Haunting, we think about authors like [Edgar Allan] Poe and [Charles] Dickens. The other criteria with it is that it has to primarily be about ghosts. That question came up with The Fall of the House of Usher because that was based on Poe. It's just not a ghost story, and so, there's no haunting there," he concluded, reiterating that The Midnight Club "was always its own thing."
Trevor Macy, who runs Intrepid Pictures with Flanagan, also chimed in, arguing that "not everything" spooky the production company puts out has to be linked to The Haunting. "We wrestle with that quite a bit because it would be great to do another one, but you have to be rigorous about what it is and what it isn't," he said.
Created by Flanagan and Leah Fong, The Midnight Club is based on Christopher Pike's novel of the same name. It centers on a group of eight, terminally ill teens, who all live together at Brightcliffe Hospice. To "escape" their realities at the end-of-life facility, run by enigmatic doctor Georgina Stanton (A Nightmare on Elm Street's Heather Langenkamp), the youngsters meet every night at 12am to tell each other scary stories.
One night, they agree that the first of them to pass away must try to communicate with the others from beyond the grave. And sure enough, after one of them dies, inexplicable supernatural events start to occur. Flanagan's frequent collaborators Samantha Sloyan, Matt Biedel, Rahul Kohli, and Zach Gilford star alongside Iman Benson, Adia, Igby Rigney, Ruth Codd, Aya Furukawa, Annarah Shephard, William Chris Sumpter, and Sauriyan Sapkota.
It is available to stream on Netflix now, as are The Haunting of Hill House and The Haunting of Bly Manor. If horror isn't your bag, then check out our guide to the best Netflix shows for some less scare-heavy viewing recommendations.
