While nothing is official yet, Deadline reports that Oscar-nominees and former co-stars Jonah Hill and Emma Stone are in the works of joining Maniac, a new dark comedy series from Paramount Pictures, Anonymous Content, and award-winning director Cary Fukunaga.
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The show is based on a 2014 Norwegian series about a mental institution patient who escapes to a fantasy world in his brain where he’s a hero and everything’s grand. And sweetening the deal is True Detective and Beasts of No Nation director Cary Fukunaga, who has signed on to direct every single episode of the show. A writer still yet to be announced.
Emma Stone and Jonah Hill are planning on working together for the first time since Superbad and surprisingly not for the big screen.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, the executive producers would be Hill, Stone, Fukunaga and Michael Sugar and Doug Wald of Anonymous Content. Although the project is being shopped around, it’s looking for a straight-to-series order for possibly two seasons! Hill was nominated for an Oscar for his performances in Moneyball and The Wolf of Wall Street, and Stone was also nominated for an Oscar for her performance in Birdman. The original series featured the primary roles of the mental patient and his therapist/romantic fixation.
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The series is apparently considering a run of one or two seasons. Comedy may seem like a unusual move for Fukunaga, considering all his films have been dark dramas, so far, but the filmmaker has already tried to make a horror movie (Stephen King’s “It”), has been working on a musical for years, and has stressed in past interviews he would love to do comedy.
