It looks like two horror icons will be working together on a television adaptation of The Knife Man. The exciting part is the harshly grim nature of the subject matter fits right into what David Cronenberg (Scanners, The Fly) and Sam Raimi (The Evil Dead, Drag Me To Hell) are both best known for.
The Knife Man follows John Hunter, a man from humble Scottish origins, who rose to become the most famous anatomist and surgeon of the eighteenth century. In an age when operations were crude, extremely painful and often fatal, Hunter rejected medieval traditions based on ancient Greek Orthodoxy to forge a revolution in surgery founded on pioneering scientific experiments.
Hunter’s scientific genius led him to become a central figure of the Enlightenment, which led him to be revered by fellow scientists and to become friendly with high society. Unfortunately, Hunter’s experiments required human corpses, and most were not donated. His tireless quest for human corpses immersed him deep in the sinister world of body-snatching.
Based on the biography The Knife Man by Wendy Moore, the series will be “about the trials and triumphs of a radical, self-educated surgeon, delivering a visceral portrait of the extraordinary and unorthodox lengths he will go to uncover the secrets of the human body.”
The first scripts of the series are being written by Rolin Jones, an Emmy-nominated scribe who has worked on Weeds and Friday Night Lights. Raimi is set to Executive Produce and Cronenberg will be both producing and directing the pilot episode.
No production start date has been set yet, though that may have something to do with casting still being wholly up in the air.
