If you ever wondered just what happened to make Norman Bates into the lady-slashing, cross-dressing, maternal skeleton maintaining bag of weirdness he is in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, then you might just get an answer thanks to US TV network A&E.
Executives from Universal Television announced at the Television Critics Association winter tour on Friday that they’d kicked off early development on the series, which aims to peek into Bates’ psyche and see how his skewed worldview came to be. You know, because Hitchcock did such a bad job by not explaining every little detail.
The show – assuming it actually gets picked up, which is not guaranteed just yet – will follow the younger Bates and his issues with mum Norma and her lover, detailing just how they damaged him. A TV show about child abuse and psychopaths! How delightful. It has a script by Anthony Cipriano and, if given the go-ahead, will crank into production this year.
In related news, we’re considering web series Bad Eggs, which explains just how the avian villains of The Birds came to be such peck-obsessed bastards. Turns out it was mostly being raised by radioactive rooks. Who knew?