American Crime Story: Katrina has been a long time coming. And it looks like it might be a little while more. Timelines seem to stretch out around the Ryan Murphy project in a odd parallel of the story it’s trying to tell. Entertainment Weekly is reporting that things are feeling real indefinite around the series.
The culprit seems to be Murphy’s busy schedule. He has two mega-hits to handle in American Horror Story and Pose and promises made about ACS: Katrina last year seem optimistic. The production has been completely rebooted after script changes, according to EW.
“We went back to square one and started over,” FX chief John Landgraf told the publication. “My understanding is [producers] have seen scripts but they haven’t given them to me yet. So much of it is right now is Ryan. He kind of sets his own timetable. I’m quite certain American Horror Story and Pose are on an annual cycle. With Crime Story and Feud they’re on a cycle of when the material is good enough and when is Ryan willing and able to slot that into his schedule. So I think there will be more cycles, but I’m not really in control of that.”
At least we can know that Murphy is putting in the work to be sure that the story is appropriate. American Crime Story has earned plaudits for its take on the O.J. Simpson trial and the assassination of Gianni Versace. Given the time that he appears to be putting in to getting the story of Memorial Medical Center in the wake of the storm right, New Orleanians might be able to let a little bit of the “someone’s making a Katrina story” tension out of their shoulders.
