‘Fatal Attraction’ Paramount+ Show Gets Release Date

Paramount+ announced a release date for the upcoming Fatal Attraction series based on the classic 1987 movie starring Michael Douglas and Glenn Close. This new series features The Affair‘s Joshua Jackson in the role Douglas originated, while Masters of Sex star Lizzy Caplan fills Close’s part. Fatal Attraction will debut on the streaming service on April 30.

The eight-episode series takes the original premise of the movie as its foundation. In the Adrian Lyne-directed film, Douglas played Dan Gallagher, a successful and married Manhattan lawyer who has a one-night stand with editor Alex Forrest (Close). While Dan tries to move on with his life, Alex refuses to let him off easily and becomes obsessed. Anne Archer co-starred as Dan’s wife Beth, the role played by Amanda Peet in the series. The movie was written by James Dearden, and the series was penned by Alexandra Cunningham (Desperate Housewives) and Kevin J. Hynes.

Cunningham, who serves as an executive producer, told reporters at the Television Critics Associated press panel Monday that the show will deviate a bit from Dearden’s story. “The screenwriter of the film James Dearden said, to him the character of Alex Forrest is not a study in madness, but rather a sad, tragic, lonely woman under pressure from a really hard job,” Cunningham explained, reports Deadline. “As a frequently sad, not at all tragic, and not as lonely as I wish I was but under pressure from a really hard job, I wanted us to go in a slightly different direction.”

Although it does share some story points with the movie, Cunningham noted that it is also “about entitlement and midlife crisis and how some of the sausage gets made in our broken justice system, as well as Cluster B personality disorders, isolation, of fathers and daughters, and murder.” It will explore how some people cannot move on from a win. “It’s about self-image and what we’ll do to protect it and also what happens when someone doesn’t have one. And if we’ve done our job, which these actors and their colleagues definitely did, they think that your sympathies will shift more than once,” the writer explained.

Caplan and Jackson said they both rewatched the film to prepare for the show. Caplan said she finds it “very, very difficult” to see Alex as a “straight villain” today, reports USA Today. “I find it very, very difficult to see Alex as a straight villain, to not ask yourself the question as an audience member, ‘Well, what’s going on with her? And also, what about consequences for him?’” Caplan said. “And it’s just the lens in which we view things now has altered so dramatically from the ’80s.”

Jackson now thinks that Dan’s mental health is also “questionable,” adding that both Dan and Alex have issues. “I do think that there is, maybe not (in) equal balance, but there is at least weight given to the reality that it’s not just that Alex has issues and bumped into a person,” Jackson explained. “It’s that Alex has issues and Dan has issues, and they met at exactly the wrong moment to create this toxic soup together.”