A24 is look­ing to turn Under the Skin into a TV series

You’ve got to hand it to Jonathan Glaz­er – the guy made one fea­ture film in the just-end­ed decade, and it’s still reg­u­lar­ly brought up among cinephiles. Under the Skin topped many best-of lists (ours, for exam­ple), and a new devel­op­ment in the works con­firms that movie-lovers will keep it in mind for some time to come.

Dead­line reports that A24 has entered a bid­ding war for the TV rights to Under the Skin, com­pet­ing with the film’s orig­i­nal financier Sil­ver Reel for the chance to con­vert the sci-fi mas­ter­piece to seri­al­ized form. Each has a stake: Sil­ver Reel has been try­ing to get this project off the ground for years, while A24 has been work­ing close­ly with Glaz­er on his next film over the past few months.

For those in need of a refresh­er, the 2013 film fol­lowed an extrater­res­tri­al crea­ture that falls to Earth and sum­mar­i­ly inhab­its the body of a sex work­er (Scar­lett Johans­son), using her fetch­ing form to lure men to their doom in a void of pure abstrac­tion. Johansson’s stud­ied per­for­mance, the mind-shred­ding score from Mica Levi, and Glazer’s haunt­ing imagery all made the film an instant classic.

How a ser­i­al ver­sion might work rais­es a few ques­tions, though. Would we fol­low the alien’s host body as she tar­gets and lures a new man each week? Would it be that the alien hops to a new host each week, or are we bark­ing up the wrong tree entire­ly by pre­sum­ing a for­mat so schematic?

That has yet to be seen, but so long as Glaz­er and pro­duc­er James Wil­son remain attached to the project, it will hope­ful­ly retain their inef­fa­bly eerie touch on the film. If noth­ing else, we’ll get to watch some peo­ple melt into a nether­world of reflec­tive ink, and that still counts for something.