'The Haunting Of Bly Manor' Release Not Affected By Coronavirus Shutdown

We'll take whatever good news we can get these days, so here's something: The Haunting of Bly Manor, the follow-up to The Haunting of Hill House, is right on schedule. The Netflix series from Mike Flanagan wrapped production before the coronavirus shut everything down, and now all the post-production work is carrying on unaffected. So while many TV shows and movies are being forced to delay their releases right now, Netflix is still likely to premiere Bly Manor this year.

As you can see above, someone on Twitter asked Mike Flanagan for an update on The Haunting of Bly Manor, and specifically inquired as to whether or not the release would be delayed to next year. Flanagan was nice enough to reply: "Still on schedule, we wrapped before the shutdown and post production has [carried] on from home. The show is shaping up wonderfully, I'm thrilled with it. At the moment no reason to think it'll be pushed. Netflix will announce the release date when they're ready."

Netflix hasn't officially revealed a date yet, but were I betting man, I'd say we could probably expect to see the series sometime around October of this year. Bly Manor is a follow-up to Flanagan's fantastic The Haunting of Hill House, and many of the same cast members are returning in different roles. While Hill House drew (loose) inspiration from Shirley Jackson's classic novel of the same name, Bly Manor is using Henry James' The Turn of the Screw as its source material. In fact, the series is actually drawing on multiple ghost stories penned by James.

In The Haunting of Bly Manor, Hill House breakout Victoria Pedretti plays a governess named Dani, who is tasked with caring for two "very unusual children." This is pretty much the plot of The Turn of the Screw, which follows a governess caring for two kids in a big, spooky house. She begins to suspect the house may be haunted – but it might all be in her head. The story was previously adapted into the fantastic film The Innocents. It was also used as the basis for this year's The Turning, a film that no one seemed to like at all.

In addition to Pedretti, Bly Manor features Henry Thomas, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Kate Siegel, T'Nia Miller, Catherine Parker, Rahul Kohli, Benjamin Evan Ainsworth, Amelie Smith, and Amelia Eve. While Flanagan directed all the episodes of Hill House, he's sharing directorial duties on Bly Manor with Ciarán Foy, Liam Gavin, Yolande Ramke and Ben Howling, and Axelle Carolyn.