‘This Beast’: ‘Sons of Anarchy’ Creator Heads to Netflix for His Feature Directorial Debut

Kurt Sutter is heading to Netflix.

The creator of Sons of Anarchy and The Bastard Executioner, who has spent a huge percentage of his career writing and producing shows for FX, will make the jump to Netflix to direct his first feature film: a mysterious film called This Beast.

According to the NetflixFilm Twitter account, Sutter will write and direct This Beast, which “is set in an 18th century English village besieged by a mysterious and elusive beast.” The nature of the beast is being kept vague at this point, but I’m curious if it will be a werewolf. I’d love to see Sutter explore the duality of a character who transforms into a beast, and it seems like that might be a psychologically fruitful conceit which would suit his storytelling strengths.

Also of note: This Beast will be produced by Jason Blum and Blumhouse Productions, marking the seventh time the company has produced a film for Netflix. Blumhouse currently has a distribution deal with Universal Pictures for theatrical movies, and has been doing some interesting stuff in the streaming space with Amazon (including four movies under the Welcome to the Blumhouse banner). But the company has thus far produced six movies for Netflix: Mike Flanagan’s 2016 horror film Hush, a 2018 reboot of Benji, Sonny Mallhi’s 2018 horror movie Family Blood, the 2018 psychological horror film Cam, yet another 2018 movie called Thriller, and Owen Egerton’s 2019 horror flick Mercy Black.

Sutter has directed one episode of The Shield, on which he served as a writer/producer for several years, and eight episodes of Sons of Anarchy, the motorcycle drama that really put him on the map about a decade ago. He’s proven capable of telling stories about morally conflicted protagonists stuck in practically impossible situations, and seems to relish in digging the deepest possible hole for his characters and seeing what how far they’ll go to claw their way out.

Sutter was fired from Mayans M.C. back in October last year amid allegations of a hostile work environment. So it’s no surprise that he’s making The Beast with a whole new slew of behind the scenes collaborators at Netflix and Blumhouse instead of working with a streamer like Hulu, which has links to FX thanks to the “FX on Hulu” branding. I’m curious if he’ll be able to recruit some actors he’s worked with previously (Charlie Hunnam, perhaps?), or if his old collaborators will want to keep their distance for a while.

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