A project once intended to be a feature film is getting a new, different life at HBO. Naoki Urasawa‘s manga Monster — about a disgraced doctor’s global search for a warped young criminal to whom he has very particular ties — is something that Guillermo del Toro was once negotiating to make at the movie studio. Now he and HBO are working together to turn it into a TV series.

Deadline reports that del Toro will direct the pilot, which will be scripted by Steven Thompson and del Toro. (A History of Violence screenwriter Josh Olsen had written the feature film version, which has evidently been scrapped.) The director will also act as exec producer. The site also mentions that Monster is a partnership with Don Murphy and Susan Montford of Angry Films and Gary Ungar of Exile — Murphy and Montford were players in del Toro’s bid to make At the Mountains of Madness at Universal. There’s no correlation beyond that, just a trainspotter’s sense of tallying figures.

Monster represents a great idea for a TV project — it spans many years and, in its manga and later anime incarnations, a large suite of characters.

The story, in short, sees a young doctor electing to save the life of a young boy rather than a visiting official. The doctor is disgraced, and years later, after rebuilding his life to some extent, he crosses paths with the boy once again. The doctor witnesses the boy commit an act of serious violence, and as a result is launched into an investigation of the boy’s past.

There’s a lot more to Monster than that, but in the interest of preserving some mystery we’ll leave it there. We’ll give you more news on Monster as it develops.