Despite the ardency of its fans, Breaking Bad wasn’t a cult show—it ended up being far too big a hit for that. But for their next project, executive producers Vince Gilligan and Michelle MacLaren will once again be toying with that label, as Variety reports they’re developing a miniseries about Jonestown for HBO. The series will be written by Gilligan and directed by MacLaren, and they’ll executive produce along with Oscar winner Octavia Spencer. It will be the first post-Breaking Bad collaboration for Gilligan and MacLaren, though the former hasn’t strayed too far from the world of Heisenberg as the creator of Better Call Saul.
The series is titled Raven, and will center on the founding and dissolution-by-suicide of The Peoples Temple Of The Disciples Of Christ, which was led by Jim Jones. It will chart the rise of fanaticism within the group, otherwise known as Jonestown, which once espoused socialism. The group eventually fled to Guyana where, on November 18, 1978, some member killed U.S. Representative Leo Ryan. This was mere hours before the mass suicide of Jones and 917 others, including 276 children.
Raven is based in part on Tim Reiterman’s non-fiction work Raven: The Untold Story of Rev. Jim Jones And His People, which Spencer had already optioned before bringing Gilligan and MacLaren aboard. There’s currently no word on when production will begin.
