'Angels & Demons', Based On Pulitzer Prize-Winning True Crime Story, Being Turned Into Limited TV Series By Scott Cooper

Scott Cooper, director of Hostiles, the upcoming Antlers, and more, is set to make his TV debut with Angles and Demons. The limited series – which is not an adaptation of the Dan Brown novel, just in case you were wondering – is based on a Pulitzer Prize-winning article by Thomas French published in the St. Petersburg Times.

Deadline has the story on the Angels and Demons TV series from Scott Cooper, who is developing the project with Black Bear Television. Cooper will write and direct all episodes of the series, marking his television debut. The series is based on the award-winning article by Thomas French, which you can read here. Here's a synopsis:

On June 4, 1989, the bodies of Jo, Michelle, and Christe were found floating in Tampa Bay. This is the story of the murders, their aftermath, and the handful of people who kept faith amid the unthinkable.

It opens with this hook:

One year had gone by since the murders, and then another, and now the investigators were deep into a third. They were working day and night, working weekends, putting off vacations, losing weight, gaining weight, growing pale and pasty and haggard, waking at 3 a.m. with a jolt and scratching notes on pads kept beside their beds.

Their sergeant did not know if they would ever find the answer. As far as he was concerned, the case was not even in their hands.

Ultimately, he believed, it was up to God whether they made an arrest.

Cue the dramatic music! The Deadline article elaborates a bit more, calling the story "a powerful and personal true crime drama examining the tragic murder of three women whose bodies were found floating in the shallow tidewaters of Tampa Bay." The article was first published in 1997, and won the Pulitzer for Feature Writing in 1998.

Cooper is an interesting filmmaker with a body of work that I wouldn't exactly call great, but I'm always curious to see what he does. His credits include the Jeff Bridges movie Crazy Heart, the bleak drama Out of the Furnace, the admittedly bland gangster pic Black Mass, the unrelentingly brutal anti-Western Hostiles, and the upcoming Antlers, a horror movie that I very much would like to see, and that should've been out by now were it not for the coronavirus. Damn you, coronavirus. Damn you right to hell. No word on when the Angles & Demons series might go into production, nor when and where we might see it, so stay tuned for future news.