Another day, another Ryan Murphy show. Deadline reports that Naomi Watts and Bobby Cannavale are set as the leads in “The Watcher,” an upcoming Netflix limited series from Ryan Murphy and frequent collaborator Ian Brennan. Executive producing with Murphy and Brennan are Eric Newman (“Narcos“) and Henry Joost, and Ariel Schulman (“Catfish”), with filming due to start in the fall. “The Watcher” will be a retelling of the story of the infamous “Watcher” house in New Jersey, following a married couple (Watts, Cannavale) whose move into their dream home is being threatened by terrifying letters from a stalker, signed “The Watcher.”
The story, recently covered in The Cut, is this: a couple who bought the home for $1.4 million were forced to abandon it over chilling letters from “The Watcher,” who claimed to have been looking over the house for decades. (One such note read, “I watch and wait for the day when the young blood will be mine again.” Charming!) In 2017, the next renters of the house also received a letter and death threat from “The Watcher”; the house ultimately sold in 2019 for 959K whole the identity of the self-proclaimed “ Watcher” remains unknown. The series will use the “Watcher” house as a springboard, presumably recalling the first season of Murphy’s ongoing hit show “American Horror Story” with its haunted house conceit.
The series will be the fourth co-creation between Murphy and Brennan, including “The Politician,” limited series “Hollywood,” and the upcoming limited series “Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story.” There are no doubt even more countless American Crime Stories due to hit Netflix until the sun burns out.