“Frankenstein’s” creator may be heading to HBO Max — and coming face to face with her most famous character. The upcoming service has ordered a pilot and an additional script for “The Shelley Society,” a series that fuses elements of Gothic horror and teen romance to tell a supernatural version of Mary Shelley’s story. Deadline broke the news.
Described as “a Victorian ‘X-Files,'” the project is created, written, and exec produced by “Riverdale” creator Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and scribes Tessa Leigh Williams and James DeWille. “The Shelley Society” sees a young Shelley leading ” a band of Romantic outlaws — among them, her lovers Percy and the Lord Byron — against all manner of supernatural threats and monsters…including Shelley’s own iconic Creature,” the source hints.
Best known for penning “Frankenstein,” Shelley wrote several other novels including “The Last Man” and many short stories.
Shelley’s mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, wrote the influential 1792 feminist manifesto “A Vindication of the Rights of Women.”
Shelley died in 1851. Elle Fanning played the trailblazer in Haifaa Al Mansour’s 2017 biopic “Mary Shelley.”