New Lovecraft Country Featurette Teases the Terror of the HBO Series

HBO’s next hit series is just hours away from premiering, with Lovecraft Country set to debut on the streaming platform this Sunday night. The genre-bending new series is set to provide an unexpected take on the mythology of horror, as well as the history of racism in America — and now we have an epic new look at what that will entail. In anticipation of the series premiere, HBO recently released a new behind-the-scenes featurette from the episode, which details how the epic new series came together. You can check it out above!

Lovecraft Country follows 25-year-old Koren war vet Atticus Black (Da 5 Bloods‘ Jonathan Majors), who joins up with his friend Letitia “Leti” Dandridge (Birds of Prey‘s Jurnee Smollett) and his Uncle George (The People v. OJ Simpson: American Crime Story‘s Courtney B. Vance) to embark on a road trip to find his missing father. Atticus, known for always having a pulp novel in his back pocket, wears his heart on his sleeve despite the daily injustice of living in 1950s Jim Crow America. The trio must survive and overcome both the racist terrors of white America and the malevolent spirits that could be ripped from a Lovecraft paperback.

“Matt [Ruff]’s book is beautiful. It’s the idea of reclaiming the genre for people who the genre typically hasn’t been for,” series creator and showrunner Misha Green recently explained to Marie Claire. “I watch all these sci-fi movies, and they’re set in the future, and there are no people of color in [them]. It’s all white people being oppressed by robots. And I’m like, Is this really a story of white people being oppressed? Any time I’m adapting anything, it’s always the beautiful first jumping-off point that you have to take to a new place. When you’re making art, you have to be making art of the times. And so it was just a natural thing to take the elements from his book that were still so relevant, because history keeps repeating itself.”

Executive producers on Lovecraft Country including Jordan Peele (Get Out, Us) and J.J. Abrams (Alias, Fringe, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker), alongside Bill Carraro, Yann Demange, Daniel Sackheim, and David Knoller. Demange and Sackheim also directed episodes of the series. The series also stars Aunjanue Ellis, Abbey Lee, Jada Harris, Wunmi Mosaku, Michael Kenneth Williams, Jamie Chung, Jordan Patrick Smith, Jamie Neumann, Erica Tazel, Mac Brandt, and Tony Goldwyn.

Are you excited to check out Lovecraft Country? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!