A&E Network is getting into the horror genre with the upcoming drama Damien.
From showrunner Glen Mazzara (The Walking Dead), Damien follows the adult life of Damien Thorn, the mysterious child from the 1976 horror film The Omen. He has grown up seemingly unaware of the satanic forces around him, but must now come to terms with his true identity: He is the Antichrist.
The series begins when Damien, an acclaimed war photographer, returns home to New York after experiencing a traumatic event while on assignment in Syria. Strange occurrences and flashbacks plague him and he is then forced to confront his destiny.
Starring iZombie’s Bradley James, Once Upon a Time‘s Barbara Hershey, Better Call Saul‘s Omid Abtahi, and The Walking Dead‘s Scott Wilson, Damien premieres Monday, March 7 at 10 p.m. PT and will act as a straight-up sequel to The Omen.
“We’re ignoring The Omen 2 and The Omen 3,” Mazzara says of the new scripted series. “I’ve been working on this for 2.5 years so it feels like a feature film.”
Although Damien lived through traumatic events when he was a young boy, both Mazzara and James reveal that he has no idea who he really is.
“He’s repressed it,” Mazzara says. “It’s the idea that he’s been involved with deaths when he was young, he’s tried to move past that. You’ll learn more about the nature of that as the show progresses. We wanted him to face his humanity.”
James thinks that’s a realistic outcome for Damien, since he was only five years old when the events of The Omen went down.
“It’s more a case of not being able to articulate it from when he was five,” James says. “All that negativity and evil was a noise and the only way he could escape that noise is to surround himself with louder noise so that’s why he became a war photographer.”
And Mazzara reveals that like the film that inspired this series, Damien will have a strong focus on religion, and will tackle big spiritual questions. For example:Â If there is a god, why does he allow bad things to happen?
Are you excited to see A&E’s take on the antichrist? How do you feel about Mazzara’s choice to ignore The Omen 2 and The Omen 3? Let us know what you think in the comments section below.
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Images: A&E
Damien premieres Monday, March 7 at 10 p.m. PT on A&E.
