Cary Fukunaga, the director of the landmark first season of HBO’s True Detective, is returning to television with even more horrifying serial killer tales, but this time at the turn of the century! Fukunaga will direct what’s being described as an “event series” based on the novel The Alienist by Caleb Carr. Academy Award winner Eric Roth and pilot episode screenwriter Hossein Amini will both serve as executive producers on the series.

According to Deadline, The Alienist “tells the story of Dr. Laszlo Kreizler who, with the help of newspaper reporter John Moore and police commissioner Theodore Roosevelt, uses the emerging discipline of psychology to track down one of New York City’s first serial killers.”

Steve Golin and Rosalie Swedlin will executive produce the series for Anonymous Content (who worked with Fukunaga previously on True Detective) and expressed their excitement by saying, “We are thrilled that Paramount has entrusted us and our brilliant creative dream team — Eric Roth, Hossein Amini, and Cary Fukunaga — to bring this much beloved, bestselling novel to the screen. The multi-episodic format will enable us to do justice to the complexity of Caleb Carr’s storytelling and his vivid and detailed portrait of late 19th century New York in all its splendor and grittiness.”

Given Fukunaga’s previous cinematic work on the period piece Jane Eyre and the Emmy-winning crime drama series True Detective, it would seem like he is the perfect person to bring The Alienist to life. The director is also slated to direct a two-part feature film version of Stephen King’s It in the summer of 2015.

HT: Deadline