Bill Hader To Co-Write, Direct, And Possibly Star In Jonestown Series In The Works At HBO

If, like us, you watched the first episode of Seth Rogen's Apple TV+ show The Studio and found yourself thinking, "Hey, that Martin Scorsese Kool-Aid movie plot kinda actually does make me want a proper, auteur driven deep-dive into Jonestown," then boy do we have some news for you. According to Variety, Bill Hader — of SNL, IT: Chapter Two, Barry, and comedian-turned-actor-turned-auteur fame — is gearing up to make a Jonestown series at HBO with Bloodline and Damages creator Daniel Zelman.

Per Variety's reporting, Hader is in the frame to serve as co-showrunner and co-writer on the prospective series, with the multi-hyphenate also being eyed to star in the show and direct episodes, too. Sadly, despite Seth Rogen's best efforts, it does not at this time look like Marty or Steve Buscemi — both of whom appeared in The Studio's Kool-Aid centric season opener — are aboard this one, which will be looking to do what Leonardo DiCaprio's dead in the water 2021 Jim Jones movie and Vince Gilligan's 2016-announced Jonestown project before it couldn't by actually getting made.

Long since a point of major cultural fascination and media interest, cult leader Jim Jones and his Peoples Temple Agricultural Project — aka Jonestown — remains perhaps the most infamous historical example of cultism there is. Seeded as far back as the 1950s and cemented with the creation of Jonestown in Guyana in the 1970s, Jones' cult were fanatical in their devotion to the paranoiac, drug-addled, Hitler-obsessed leader, and their worship of the faux-socialist led to 918 members of said cult committing mass suicide via poisoned Flavor Aid (or, as popular culture ordinarily misidentifies it, Kool-Aid) in 1978 at Jones' direction.

Since finishing his actor-assassin black comedy Barry back in 2023, Hader — who was serving as writer-director-actor on the critically acclaimed show by the time its run ended — has only shown up on our screens again the once, voicing Banana in John Krasinski's IF. Should this Jonestown series come to fruition then, this would be Hader's next major project — and given the nature of the subject matter, we'd fully expect it to be every bit as dark, and as laced with dark humorous, as the SNL alum's last series. And frankly, Barry is so damn good that we, er, drunk the Bill Hader Kool-Aid a long, long time ago and are ready to do it again. Let's just hope HBO don't pull a Matt Remick and buy the rights only to kill the project!