Fatal Attraction Reboot Premiering on Paramount+ Very Soon

A new year means a new slate of TV series premieres to look forward to, with one of the more anticipated projects being a new adaptation of the 1987 Paul Verhoeven film Fatal Attraction, which is set to premiere in April. One big difference between the upcoming interpretation and the source material is in sheer length, as the storyline will be extended across eight episodes of a TV series as opposed to containing the concept to a feature-length film. While full details of tweaks the adaptation has made have yet to be revealed, there are sure to be some changes made to the narrative, given the ways in which cultures have shifted over the last 30 years. Fatal Attraction debuts on Paramount+ on April 30th.

Paramount+ describes the new series, “Joshua Jackson will star as Dan Gallagher, the object of his lover’s (Lizzy Caplan) obsession after a brief affair. A deep-dive reimagining of the classic psychosexual thriller and ’80s cultural touchstone, the new series will explore fatal attraction and the timeless themes of marriage and infidelity through the lens of modern attitudes towards strong women, personality disorders, and coercive control.”

The original film was a seminal experience in the world of erotic thrillers, with that film starring Michael Douglas and Glenn Close. Writer of this new series Alexandra Cunningham previously detailed finding the right balance between honoring the source material without just repeating it.

“I did a lot of reading about the film and Glenn Close talking about the empathy she had for Alex, and how she felt that Alex was out of control and obviously not evil, which I definitely agree with because I don’t believe in evil,” Cunningham revealed to Entertainment Weekly last year. “Glenn talked about how, when she was doing the character work on Alex, she brought the script to two different psychiatrists, and neither one of them brought up mental illness, because it was the ’80s and nobody did that. She’s become such a mental health advocate since then, and it makes me sad that she’s said that she feels responsible for a lot of the stigma toward mental illness in pop culture because of her portrayal of Alex. She’s also said that she felt that it would be interesting to literally tell the exact same story, but from Alex’s point of view, and I kind of sparked to that.”

Cunningham added, “We want to entertain people who are familiar with the touchstones of the original movie, but also people who have no idea what it is. If people are interested, we want them to be able to jump in and enjoy it for its own merits, even if they don’t have context for bunny boiling.”

Fatal Attraction premieres on Paraamount+ on April 30th.

Are you looking forward to the new series? Let us know in the comments or contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter to talk all things Star Wars and horror!