Guillermo del Toro, 'Southland' Scribe Developing Hitchcockian Drama at HBO (Exclusive)

The premium cable network has optioned Corinne May Botz's "Nutshell Studies," about a 1950s small-town housewife who becomes obsessed with solving brutal crimes.

HBO is going to a dark place with Guillermo del Toro.

The premium cable network has optioned Corinne May Botz’s Nutshell Studies, a Hitchcockian drama about a 1950s small-town housewife who becomes obsessed with solving brutal crimes.

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Del Toro will serve as an executive producer as well as director on the project, with novelist Sara Gran on board to write and co-executive produce. Joining the duo is del Toro's manager Gary Unger, who is attached as a non-writing executive producer. Botz, who published the book in 2004, will consult.

Gran writes for TNT’s Southland and is poised to write and co-EP an adaptation of her female detective novel series, Claire Dewitt, for John Wells and Warner Horizon.

For his part, del Toro has been developing a potential Hulk live-action series for ABC. On the big screen, the Oscar-nominated writer-director, best known for such films as Pan's Labyrinth and Hellboy, is prepping the sci-fi adventure Pacific Rim, starring Idris Elba, Charlie Day, Charlie Hunnam and Ron Perlman. He has said of the film: "It's a very, very beautiful poem to giant monsters. Giant monsters versus giant robots."

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Del Toro is repped by WME and Exile Entertainment; Gran is repped by RWSG Agency, The Karpfinger Agency and Hirsch Wallerstein.

Email: Lacey.Rose@THR.com; Twitter: @LaceyVRose