‘Dream Scenario’ Filmmaker Kristoffer Borgli To Helm & EP HBO Bret Easton Ellis Series ‘The Shards’

Following his big splash in U.S. Cinema last year with A24’s absurdist Nicolas Cage comedy Dream Scenario, Norwegian filmmaker Kristoffer Borgli is attached to direct and EP the HBO development series title, The Shards.

The Shards is based on Bret Easton Ellis’ novel of the same name, and is set in the early 80s and tracks a group of privileged Los Angeles High School friends as a serial killer strikes across the city. There is also a podcast which dropped in 2022.

More from Deadline

• 'Strike' Star Tom Burke Requested BBC Media Training To Prepare For J.K. Rowling Trans Questions

• 2024 Premiere Dates For New & Returning Series On Broadcast, Cable & Streaming

• 'The White Lotus' Walton Goggins Says His Experience On Season 3 Is "All Very Meta On Every Level"

In The Shards, Seventeen-year-old Bret is a senior at the exclusive Buckley prep school when a new student arrives with a mysterious past. Robert Mallory is bright, handsome, charismatic, and shielding a secret from Bret and his friends even as he becomes a part of their tightly knit circle. Bret’s obsession with Mallory is equaled only by his increasingly unsettling preoccupation with the Trawler, a serial killer on the loose who seems to be drawing ever closer to Bret and his friends, taunting them—and Bret in particular—with grotesque threats and horrific, sharply local acts of violence. The coincidences are uncanny, but they are also filtered through the imagination of a teenager whose gifts for constructing narrative from the filaments of his own life are about to make him one of the most explosive literary sensations of his generation. Can he trust his friends—or his own mind—to make sense of the danger they appear to be in? Thwarted by the world and by his own innate desires, buffeted by unhealthy fixations, he spirals into paranoia and isolation as the relationship between the Trawler and Robert Mallory hurtles inexorably toward a collision.

Ellis serves as writer and EP. Emmy-winner Nick Hall (The White Lotus), Brian Young and Kathleen McCaffrey are also EPs.

Borgli also directed the movie, Sick of Myself, which made its world premiere at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival. Borgli is repped by UTA and Granderson Des Rochers.

Best of Deadline

• 'Knives Out 3': Everything We Know About The Second Rian Johnson Sequel

• Hollywood & Media Deaths In 2024: Photo Gallery & Obituaries

• 2024-25 Awards Season Calendar - Dates For Oscars, Tonys, Guilds, BAFTAs, Spirits & More

Sign up for Deadline's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.