Norman Reedus (The Walking Dead) is developing a live-action series titled Neglected Murderesses based on the novel by Edward Gorey. Reedus will executive produce the series through his production company bigbaldhead alongside JoAnne Colona and Amanda Verdon. The project is under the company’s first-look deal with AMC Studios (via Variety).
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Neglected Murderesses is described as a black comedy that tells the story of twelve enterprising, fictitious female killers, who use particularly unique methods to off their victims, including Nurse J. Rosebeetle, “who tilted her employer out of a wheelchair and over a cliff at Sludgemouth in 1898,” Mrs. Fledaway, who “laced her husband’s tea with atropine in the spring of 1903,” and Miss Q. P. Urkheimer, who “brained her fiancé after failing to pick up an easy spare at Glover’s Lanes.”
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The series will mark the first time the Edward Gorey Estate has allowed an adaptation of Gorey’s work. The Edward Gorey Charitable Trust has reportedly pledged that all profits earned from the series will be donated to “a number of animal welfare organizations, given Gorey’s fondness for animals.” The organizations will include The Elephant Sanctuary, The International Fund for Animal Welfare, The National Marine Life Center, and more.
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Reedus’ team at bigbaldhead have apparently been pursuing the rights to Neglected Murderesses for several years now. Gorey, who was a writer, illustrator, and designer whose pen-and-ink drawings were well-known for their “Victorian and Edwardian imagery” and macabre sense of humor, inspired a number of authors and artists, such as Lemony Snickett, Wes Anderson, Tim Burton, and Neil Gaiman.
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