Working Title - Planet Flanagan: Essays on the Netflix Series of Mike Flanagan

Mike Flanagan has steadily made a significant name for himself in horror, garnering praise for his originality in films such as Oculus (2013) and Hush (2016), and further critical acclaim for works like Ouija: Origin of Evil (2016), Gerald’s Game (2017) and especially his adaptation of Stephen King’s Doctor Sleep (2019).

But for all the attention that Flanagan rightly deserves for his work in features, it is also undeniable that the flowering of his reputation is also intimately linked to the five limited series’ that he developed for Netflix: The Haunting of Hill House (2018), The Haunting of Bly Manor (2020), Midnight Mass (2021), The Midnight Club (2022), and The Fall of the House of Usher (2023). Though varying in popularity, these series’ cemented Flanagan’s reputation as a television horror craftsman, garnering him and his consistent collaborators both in front of and behind the camera widespread recognition for the riveting experiences and emotionally resonant stories they brought to streaming audiences. The popularity and critical success of these shows made Flanagan a safe bet at Netflix and were instrumental in furthering Flanagan’s career and solidifying his reputation in the community of horror fans and scholars and beyond. In 2022, though, Flanagan and his producing partner Trevor Macey announced that they would be leaving Netflix, instead inking a multi-year deal with Amazon Studios with the intention of producing other television shows and feature films under via their Intrepid Pictures brand.

The end of Flanagan’s partnership with Netflix offers a compelling chapter division in Flanagan’s film and television work. The five series that Flanagan wrote, produced, and directed for Netflix compose a specific corpus of work shaped by Flanagan’s personal tastes and development as a horror auteur, the time and culture of their various releases, and of course by Flanagan’s relationship to Netflix as a producing partner and distributor of his work at the time. As such, these five series’ form a distinct catalog of content through which study can be made of significant elements of Flanagan’s stylistic, thematic, and topical preoccupations. 

Planet Flanagan is a proposed anthology that intends to emphasize the thematic consistencies acrossthe five television series that Flanagan produced for Netflix. Though he also produced feature films for the service—one originally for them, others that the company acquired distribution for—these series’ form the larger bedrock of his reputation with and connection to the service, and their extended length and the shared consistency of their casts and behind-the-scenes talent offer incredibly fertile ground for exploring the importance of particular ideas and tendencies within Flanagan’s work.

Specifically, this collection seeks original essays thematically engaging with all five of the shows Flanagan and his collaborators produced for Netflix. Specific chapters are sought on how the following thematic topics are presented and developed across these five shows:

  -Family

  -Memory

  -Death and Dying

  -Gender and Sexuality

  -Space and Architecture

  -Childhood

  -Trauma

  -Ghosts and Monsters

  -Politics and neoliberalism

  -Nostalgia

  -Precarity

  -Phenomenological readings of these series

  -Feminist readings of these series

Additional essays are sought concentrating on Flanagan’s status as an auteur, his relationship to Netflix, his significance for television horror, the consistent collaborations he has with cast members and crew (including the Newton Brothers, producer Trevor Macy, and cinematographer Michael Fimognari), and the importance and variations in adaptation across these shows.

Other, original essay proposals are welcomed, so long as they fit in the expressed scope of the project and can engage with all five of Flanagan’s Netflix series.

Lehigh University Press has expressed initial interest in the project as a part of their Critical Conversations in Horror series.

Interested participants should submit a CV and an abstract of up to 500 words to Zachary Sheldon (Zachary_Sheldon@Baylor.edu) by February 14, 2025.

If accepted, full draft chapters of up to 10,000 words will be due by the end of August 2025.

Note: Acceptance of a proposed abstract does not guarantee acceptance of the completed chapter.

Prospective authors are encouraged to reach out to the editor with any questions, proposed alternative chapter options, or any further discussion.