Amy Adams to Star in Gillian Flynn’s ‘Sharp Objects’ TV Series for ‘Wild’ Director

Following the success of David Fincher’s acclaimed Gone Girl adaptation, the long-developing series based on Gillian Flynn’s first novel, Sharp Objects, is finally picking up some steam with UnREAL co-creator Marti Noxon as showrunner. Not only has Noxon found her leading lady in Amy Adams, but she’s also tapped Wild director Jean-Marc Vallee to helm, with Jason Blum of Blumhouse producing, and Flynn herself on board to write. That’s quite the killer lineup.

What’s strange about this update from Deadline is that Adams seemed better suited for the lead role in Flynn’s Dark Places, which yielded an underwhelming adaptation starring Charlize Theron. But Adams is inarguably a great actress who will sink her teeth into the latest Flynn adaptation, which was originally planned as a feature film, but is now being shopped to television networks as a limited series.

Wild and Dallas Buyers Club director Jean-Marc Vallee will helm the Sharp Objects series based on Flynn’s first novel, which centers on reporter Camille Preaker, who returns to her hometown to investigate the deaths of two preteen girls following her stay in a psychiatric institution. In addition to coping with her own mental troubles, Camille is forced to deal with her hypochondriac mother and the half-sister she’s barely known. The novel is much like an edgier, more grown-up V.C. Andrews story, and Flynn herself has confirmed that she was inspired by Andrews’ series of soapy and twisted books.

In addition to working on the second season of UnREAL, Martin Noxon (formerly of Mad Men and Buffy the Vampire Slayer) will serve as showrunner and wrote the pilot for Sharp Objects, with Flynn also involved as a series writer. That’s an intensely great lineup of talent, which already makes Sharp Objects seem far more promising than Dark Places.

Vallee is also currently developing the Big Little Lies series for HBO, which stars Reese Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman, Shailene Woodley, Adam Scott and Alexander Skarsgard, with Witherspoon and Kidman producing.

Adams can be seen next in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, and also stars in Denis Villeneuve’s upcoming sci-fi flick Story of Your Life, as well as Nocturnal Animals, Tom Ford’s long-awaited follow-up to A Single Man.

As for Flynn, she’s been developing projects with Gone Girl director David Fincher, and her short story The Grownup is in development at Universal following a heated bidding war.