Mike Flanagan has become the king of horror on Netflix in recent years, with series such as The Haunting of Hill House, Midnight Mass and now The Midnight Club sending shivers down viewers' spines.
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The Haunting of Hill House first landed in 2018 and became an anthology series in 2020 with the release of The Haunting of Bly Manor. That year, Flanagan tweeted that he had "no plans for more chapters" in the spooky collection, but now it seems he may have changed his tune.
Speaking at a recent press event for The Midnight Club, Flanagan was asked about the Haunting series and seemed to suggest there could be more on the cards for the franchise.
He said: "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. [But] we don’t want to do it just to do it."
The cast of The Haunting of Hill House. Netflix
Meanwhile, Intrepid Pictures CEO Trevor Macy added: "Not everything is 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."
This discussion came about after Flanagan was asked whether The Midnight Club was ever conceived as part of the Haunting series, as The Haunting of Brightcliffe Hospice - something he said was never the case.
He explained: "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.
"When we think of the Haunting, we think about authors like [Edgar Allan] Poe and [Charles] Dickens, contemporaries that are more in the Henry James, Shirley Jackson world. 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."
Flanagan's latest series, The Midnight Club, debuted on the streamer on 7th October, gaining rave reviews and even a Guinness World Record for the most scripted jump scares in a single episode of TV.
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James Hibbs is a Drama Writer for Radio Times, covering programmes across both streaming platforms and linear channels. He previously worked in PR, first for a B2B agency and subsequently for international TV production company Fremantle. He possesses a BA in English and Theatre Studies and an NCTJ Level 5 Diploma in Journalism.
