‘American Crime Story’ season 2 to reportedly focus on Hurricane Katrina
Even though the first season of “American Crime Story” on FX is now premiering until February, this is not stopping Ryan Murphy and the rest of his team at the studio from planning ahead to what the future of the franchise may be … as surprising as it could sound to some out there.
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Murphy confirmed that season 2 is going to shift focus from the OJ Simpson trial to Hurricane Katrina, and how some of the aftermath of that storm ended up playing out in the headlines for weeks to come. While in theory a natural disaster is not so much a crime, he goes on to explain that there was plenty of criminal activity that played out as a result:
“I want this show to be a socially conscious, socially aware examination of different types of crime around the world … And in my opinion, Katrina was a f—ing crime — a crime against a lot of people who didn’t have a strong voice, and we’re going to treat it as a crime. That’s what this show is all about.”
We do think that there is material there to tell a story about Katrina and how unprepared the city of New Orleans and the federal government were for it; however, at the same time we’d prefer this story to look more at trial cases, and give people effectively a smarter, layered version of the sort of stuff that they see on Lifetime from time to time. There’s something very interesting in examining how the media covers these cases, what is treated as fascinating, and what is now. Trayvon Martin and Casey Anthony are two examples of recent cases that the show could examiner; the same could go for the Clutter family murders, which were the subject of Truman Captoe’s “In Cold Blood,” or if you want to go back further, the Chester Gillette story, which eventually became the inspiration for the novel “An American Tragedy.”
We’ll have some other coverage of the series moving forward, so stay tuned! Also, sign up over here to book some more TV news on everything we cover, sent right over to you via our CarterMatt Newsletter. (Photo: FX.)