Your childhood dreams are coming true — the scary ones. Eva Longoria, who’s taking over television with multiple projects in development, is bringing some of the spookiest leyendas to the small screen.
Longoria is producing the series, which will focus on Hispanic folklore, with Andrea Newman (Chicago Fire) for NBC. The first season’s storyline has already been announced, and will tackle one of Mexico’s most famous legends, La Llorona. If you were somehow lucky enough not to have your mother invoke her at bedtime, here’s a primer: a kind of Mexican Medea (not to be confused with Tyler Perry’s Madea), it’s said that she drowned her children to spite her cheating husband, and now wanders the earth in search of them, sometimes kidnapping children she confuses for her own. Her wailing is her most distinctive feature. (There are different variants of the story but they all end with her killing her kids and haunting your nightmares.)
It’s an anthology series, so each season will be self-contained (think True Detective or American Horror Story). This means the writers and producers will have a chance to really flesh out these tales. Though the show will be set in the American Southwest, we could see El Sombrerón, who so enchants young Guatemalan women that they waste away pining for him or maybe El Cucuy, the bogeyman we were sure was hiding in our closets, waiting to eat us.
Halloween being right around the corner has gotten us thinking: what scary stories would you like to see adapted for TV?