Damien
Season 1 Episode 2: “Second Death”
Directed by Ernest R. Dickerson
Written by Mark L. Kruger
Created by Glen Mazzara
Starring Bradley James, Barbara Hershey, Megalyn EK, Omid Abtahi, Scott Wilson, David Meunier, Tiffany Hines, Sam Anderson
A&E
Air Date: Monday, March 14th, 2016, 10pm

Damien is based on Richard Donner’s 1976 horror classic about a wealthy family whose son is not what he seems. The film featured an Oscar winning score from Jerry Goldsmith and all time great actors including Oscar winner Gregory Peck and David Warner. The series, which debuted last week, introduces us to Damien Thorn age 30, celebrating his birthday in Damascus, Syria photographing the violence ravaging the city. He appears to be a totally normal guy. Looks can be deceiving.

“Damien I love you. It’s all for you!” Those are the words that trigger Damien Thorn’s memories of a childhood long since forgotten. Those words; spoken by a mysterious woman in the middle of a war-torn street, give Damien (Bradley James) visions of his birthday party when his nanny uttered the same phrase before leaping to her death with a noose wrapped around her neck. Desperately trying to figure out how a stranger in Syria knows his name, Damien and ex-girlfriend and current colleague Kelly (Tiffany Hines) find clues leading to a professor whose old teacher met with Damien’s father years back. Before the end of the premiere episode the professor and Kelly met mysterious ends. Damien is tormented by his visions, and seems to be aware of the ramifications and their meaning… that he is the Beast, the Antichrist.

SPOILERS below!

Damien
Season 1 Episode 1: “The Beast Rises”
Directed by Shekhar Kapur
Written by Glen Mazzara
Created by Glen Mazzara
Starring Bradley James, Barbara Hershey, Megalyn EK, Omid Abtahi, Scott Wilson, David Meunier, Tiffany Hines, Sam Anderson
A&E
Air Date: Monday, March 7th, 2016, 10pm

Richard Donner’s The Omen (1976) is legitimately the scariest movie I ever saw. As a young kid, I made it an hour before I ran screaming from the room and slept with the light on for weeks. I couldn’t get Jerry Goldsmith’s Oscar winning score out of my head, and I had nightmares of the theme, “Ave Satani.” While The Exorcist (1973) is more notorious, The Omen was more subtle, relying on the music, and editing to create horrific moments, rather than persistent gross out shocks. So when I heard a show based on one my favorite horror films was coming to the network that already has one of the best horror shows on TV (A&E/Bates Motel) I was psyched. I was even more psyched after watching the premiere episode “The Beast Rises,” the 33-year old version of myself was similar to the 9-year old; after watching it, I stayed awake another 2 hours unable to sleep.

SPOILERS Below!

Mondays are now officially “Horror Night” on A&E as Damien is set to join the already successful Bates Motel in the cable network’s prime time lineup. Damien is based on Richard Donner’s 1976 classic The Omen, which is about a wealthy political family whose adopted son turns out to be the Antichrist. Now a 30-year old war photographer, Damien begins having visions of the childhood he doesn’t remember, a childhood filled with crazy nannies, demonic rottweilers, and a father who was shot trying to kill him. A&E has released three sneak peek clips of Mondays premiere episode.

Check out the 3 sneak peek videos below.

Horror on TV is en vogue. Sure, for years cable and network television have been flooded with vampires, werewolves, and zombies, but in the past few years some our favorite movies have gone from the big screen to the small screen. MTV padded its summer schedule with a series based on Wes Craven’s Scream. The folks behind American Horror Story and Glee created a 80s horror homage with Scream Queens in the fall and Starz brought back the cult classic Evil Dead with Bruce Campbell for a 10-episode run last winter in Ash vs. Evil Dead. Rumors of a Friday the 13th series as well as Exorcist one are circulating. A&E, the network that brought Alfred Hitchcock’s classic Psycho to the world of episodic television with Bates Motel in 2013, is now making a show based on the scariest movie I ever saw, Richard Donner’s The Omen, called simply Damien.

Check out the trailer below.

A prequel to director Stanley Kubrick’s movie adaptation of the Stephen King novel The Shining, titled Overlook Hotel, is still on the way and is currently being developed at Warner Brothers. The movie is written by Glen Mazzara, former showrunner of AMC’s The Walking Dead, and it is set to be directed by Mark Romanek, who previously directed One Hour Photo, Never Let Me Go, and the pilot for the Locke & Key TV series that never came to be.

The Rundown, Zodiac, The Amazing Spider-Man,, and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 writer James Vanderbilt, who is a producer on the Shining prequel, spoke recently about it and had nothing but praise for Mazzara and Romanek and the way the movie is shaping up. See what he had to say below.