The Midnight Club: All About Mike Flanagan’s Netflix Horror Series From Story to Star Cast
Mike Flanagan never stops now he is coming with his upcoming series The Midnight Club. Each time he does not even wait long enough to finish filming a TV series, which has already set the idea for his next job in the pipeline. This was the case with his successful Netflix works such as The Haunting of Hill House, The Haunting of Bly Manor and Midnight Mass. hopes) horror masterpieces: namely The Midnight Club. While the latter series is preparing to make its debut on the small screen, as Flanagan never stops, in the meantime, it has finished filming another upcoming TV series, based on a tale of terror by Edgar Allan Poe of 1839: The fall of the Usher house. As Flanagan continues to produce, here’s everything we know about his new Netflix original series, The Midnight Club. This article is constantly updated.
The Plot of The Midnight Club
The story of The Midnight Club is set in the Brightcliffe Clinic, an institution run by a mysterious doctor and where eight teenagers suffering from terminal illnesses are hospitalized. The building consists of an ancient manor, used as a place to assist patients in their last moments of life. While waiting for their destiny, to defeat the fear of death, they begin to gather together every evening after midnight, to tell each other stories of fear and mysteries. Hence the title of the work The Midnight Club means “The Midnight Club“.
Precisely on the occasion of one of these nocturnal meetings, one evening the young protagonists decide to seal a pact: who among them will die before the others, will have to make sure to return from the afterlife to give a signal to their companions still alive. Strange phenomena will therefore begin to manifest themselves in the manor, but it will not be easy to understand what is real, as the boys are in therapy with heavy drugs given their conditions and also considering that they could be influenced by the situation created by themselves.
The Midnight Club Trailers
At the Netflix Geeked Week 2022 event, the first teaser on The Midnight Club was released on June 6, made available as usual on the Netflix YouTube channel. In the short but intense teaser of The Midnight Club, Mike Flanagan’s touch immediately shines through with a creepy atmosphere, flawless photography and chilling music. Although the protagonists are young boys, once again the choice of the cast seems to be very convincing and spot on. The Midnight Club makes a toast by reciting a sinister nursery rhyme, dedicated to all those who have been in that place before them, to the current present and to those who will be part of it in the future, including those who are not physically in the manor but are spiritual.
Just at the end of the toast as thunder and lightning are heard, a hooded figure appears for a few seconds that perhaps could hide another mystery in history. Or he could anticipate to the viewer the death of one of the protagonists, who has returned from beyond the grave to greet – or even scare – his friends. This scene is also a reference/tribute to the cover of Pike’s novel from which the series is based: in that context, the hooded person is one of the guys in the group, who is telling the others a scary story using themed clothing. On September 20, 2022, Netflix released the first official trailer of The Midnight Club, both in Italian and in the original language.
Compared to the first teaser of The Midnight Club, which was aimed more than anything else at introducing the protagonists through a short presentation, in the trailer we get to the heart of the story with a general overview. In addition to the group of boys, actress Heather Langenkamp is also shown in the role of the doctor who runs the clinic. Through the hospitalization of a new patient in the structure, from the images of the trailer it is possible to better understand how the whole daytime organization works when the boys have to follow the rules of the place and what happens instead at night when the group meets in secret.
The Images of The Midnight Club
The first promotional images for The Midnight Club were released from the official Netflix Geeked Twitter profile on August 18, 2022:
meet THE MIDNIGHT CLUB
from the mind of Mike Flanagan, the new series comes to Netflix on October 7 pic.twitter.com/iaQxBqZ4oM
— Netflix Geeked (@NetflixGeeked) August 18, 2022
The Cast Of The Midnight Club
Below you can see the complete list of the cast of The Midnight Club. The main protagonists and guest stars were announced by Mike Flanagan himself through a tweet on his official Twitter profile, on February 1, 2021:
As we approach the start of production on Intrepid’s new Netflix series, The Midnight Club, based on the work of Christopher Pike, I am honored and excited to announce our cast: playing the club of young patients is a fantastic group of young people actors. The Midnight Club is made up of Adia, Igby Rigney, Ruth Codd, William Chris Sumpter, Aya Furukawa, Annarah Shephard and Sauriyan Sapkota. In addition to them, I am thrilled to welcome back some familiar faces such as Zach Gilford, Samantha Sloyan and Matt Biedel who are joining the cast in supporting roles. (Other well-known faces from previous Intrepid projects will appear as guest stars along the way.) And finally… I’m honored to welcome Heather Langenkamp, who comes aboard the show in the role of the enigmatic doctor who runs this shelter for boys. For horror fans like me, Heather is a queen and I’m so excited to be working with her.
Main Protagonists
- Igby Rigney
- Ruth Codd
- Aya Furukawa
- William Chris Sumpter
- Sauriyan Sapkota
- Adia
- Annarah Cymone
- Heather Langenkamp as Doctor Georgina Stanton. The actress is known for playing the role of Nancy Thompson in the 1984 film Nightmare – Deep of the Night and in subsequent chapters of the saga such as Nightmare 3 – The Dream Warriors of 1987 and Nightmare – 1994’s New Nightmare from the other cast members of The Midnight Club were not revealed.
Secondary characters
- Zach Gilford
- Samantha Sloyan
- Matt Biedel
Recurring guest stars
- Robert Longstreet
- Crystal Balint
- Patricia Drake
- Nick Preston
Other characters
- Iman Benson
- William B. Davis
- Larsen Thompson
- Yuki Morita
- Ranjit Samra
- Virginia Penney
- George Haralabopoulus
- Emily Piggford
- Parmiss Sehat
- Taylor Dianne Robinson
- Justin Derickson
- Shalyn Ferdinand
- JJ Harris
- Kenneth Liu
- Marlee Grace Becker
- Jordan Gooden
- Matheus Severus
- Aidan Wright
- Taya Seaton
- John Andrew Vaas
- Shoanna Morgan
Some of the aforementioned actors who are part of the cast of The Midnight Club have already worked with Flanagan in other TV series by the author:
Nick Preston starred in The Haunting of Bly Manor.
Patricia Drake, Igby Rigney, Annarah Cymone, Zach Gilford, Matt Biedel, Crystal Balint, Robert Longstreet and Samantha Sloyan starred in Midnight Mass.
While Ruth Codd, Sauriyan Sapkota, Zach Gilford, Matt Biedel, Crystal Balint, Robert Longstreet and Samantha Sloyan I’m also in the cast of The Fall of the Usher House. A new TV series also by Flanagan, in post-production after filming concluded in July 2022. Samantha Sloyan, as well as in Midnight Mass, The Midnight Club and The Fall of the Usher House, also starred in The Haunting of Hill House.
How Many Episodes Of The Midnight Club Are There
The Midnight Club consists of ten episodes lasting about an hour each.
Where and when to see The Midnight Club
The Midnight Club will be available from 7 October 2022 in the Netflix catalog with the release of all ten episodes at the same time. The announcement of the debut of the TV series on the streaming platform took place during the Netflix Geeked Week event together with the first teaser mentioned above.
The Development Of The Midnight Club
On May 5, 2020 Variety announced that Christopher Pike’s 1994 novel, The Midnight Club, would have a television adaptation. Mike Flanagan as a boy was a huge fan of the writer and read all of his books along with his friends. It was Pike’s lyrics that made him face adolescence and grow up with all that that age group entails. One book in particular had always remained in Flanagan’s heart, namely The Midnight Club and he always wanted to make a themed film on the subject. He has tried several times to contact Pike but without success; until in 2019, after the debut of The Haunting of Hill House, he wrote Pike the following message, as reported by Vanity Fair :
I’m a big fan of yours. I’m not sure I would have embarked on the same career and path that I chose to take if I hadn’t fallen in love with the horror genre and fiction as a boy. And it was all about your work. I’ve made some TV shows for Netflix and I think they could win over a young teen audience, in case you’re interested.
Pike was skeptical about it and took some time, but the two authors later reached an agreement. Mike Flanagan on May 6, 2020, also confirmed on his official Twitter profile, that in The Midnight Club there will also be references to other books by Christopher Pike for lovers of the genre:
Oh and for you other Pike fans out there … the article is telling the truth, we will be incorporating many of his books into the series. So if you have a favorite Pike book, there’s a chance it’s part of the show.
The novels in question that will be covered in the TV series The Midnight Club are: Witch of 1990, Gimme a Kiss of 1988, The Wicked Heart and Road to Nowhere both of 1993.
Filming of The Midnight Club
Principal filming for The Midnight Club began on March 15, 2021, in Burnaby, British Columbia. The production was originally planned to finish on September 8 of the same year but eventually ended on September 10. The start of filming was announced the same day by Mike Flanagan on his official Twitter profile on March 15, 2021:
The Novel From Which The Midnight Club Is Based
Christopher Pike (pseudonym of Kevin McFadden) is an author of so-called young adult books: content for children and adolescents who have now left the world of childhood and are getting closer and closer to that of adults. Pike’s novels are thriller, detective, and science fiction genres and the story of his novel The Midnight Club is about a group of sick teenagers living in Rotterdam Home, who try to defeat death together in the clinic where they live.
The writer was on the crest of the wave in the nineties and had several fans among the very young, including a terminally ill girl. When the disease began taking place, the girl’s parents turned to Christopher Pike to ask him for the pleasure of meeting her daughter, as her last wish. At the time, a meeting was not possible for Pike due to the considerable distance that separated them, but in return, he began a long-distance friendship through letters and phone calls.
During these conversations Pike learns that the girl with other little patients had created a book club to talk about her novels where they met together every night, in the hospital where they were hospitalized. The writer decided to dedicate a story about this book club, but modifying the part in which the protagonists read his books and replacing everything with horror stories of another genre. He also invited his “number one” fan to read the chapters as he finished them. The girl preferred to wait for the complete book to come out, but unfortunately, she lost her battle against the disease before the work was finished.
The Midnight Club Filmmakers
The Midnight Club TV series is a production of Intrepid Pictures, a company that signed a global deal with Netflix in 2019, along with Field House Productions. The Midnight Club is co-produced by Mike Flanagan with Leah Fong, both executive producers with Intrepid’s Trevor Macy, Julia Bicknell and Christopher Pike himself. The screenplay was written by Leah Fong, who also worked on The Haunting of Bly Manor, Elan Gale, James Flanagan and Chinaka Hodge under the supervision of Adam Fasullo, TV vice president of Intrepid Pictures. The director includes Axelle Carolyn, Emmanuel Osei-Kuffour, Michael Fimognari, Morgan Beggs and Viet Nguyen. Flanagan helped direct the first two episodes of the series. The announcement of the directors who are part of the staff was given by Flanagan on his official Twitter profile, on June 13, 2021:
