Kool-Aid, the Series, Is Happening

A sentiment you might see expressed about the Apple TV+ satire The Studio is that the show is a testament to how well art can imitate life. But the show’s legacy may actually be the opposite. Real life, it appears, has begun imitating The Studio. HBO is developing a series about the Jonestown massacre with creators Bill Hader and Daniel Zelman, per Deadline on April 23. If that pitch sounds familiar, it may be because a screen adaptation of the Jonestown massacre is a major plot point of The Studio’s pilot episode. In it, Seth Rogen’s studio-head character is tasked with making a movie based on an inane piece of intellectual property his fictional studio owns the rights to — the fruit-punch brand Kool-Aid — and in an attempt to assert his creative integrity, he tries to fulfill this obligation by buying the rights to a Martin Scorsese script about the infamous 1978 mass murder-suicide in which more than 900 people died by drinking poisoned Kool-Aid. Spoiler alert: He chickens out at the last second and makes an enemy of the legendary director forever.

Hader and Zelman’s adaptation will take the form of a TV series rather than a movie and will likely be less fraught with studio interference. Someone check in on Scorsese to see how he feels about the news.

• [deadline]

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