It may not have been the “most ambitious crossover events in history,” but Apocalypse was the most ambitious crossover in American Horror Story history. The eighth season of FX’s horror anthology series was a little bit of Murder House, a little bit of Coven, and whole lot of Sarah Paulson, who hasn’t been announced for the upcoming, slasher-heavy installment, 1984. Neither have two other franchise mainstays, Evan Peters and Frances Conroy. That’s because, as FX head honcho John Landgraf said Tuesday during the Television Critics Association press tour, American Horror Story needed to wipe the slate clean.
“[Ryan Murphy] did something really interesting, which is he decided to weave multiple different cycles through the eighth season, and so it was the biggest cast ever,” Landgraf told the Wrap. “You had actors that were playing two, three different characters. You had to bring back all the cast from prior seasons. It was a monster in terms of the size of the cast, cost of that cast. You can’t do that all the time.” He added, “Part of what he needed to do, which is what he did, was clean the slate, start over.” (Ryan Murphy is also starting over: he left 20th Century Fox TV, now owned by Disney, for a mega-deal with Netflix.)
Apocalypse was hard to enjoy if you haven’t seen the early seasons it was referencing; that won’t be the case with 1984, which sounds like an entertaining standalone. Of course, Landgraf’s comments could be a ruse and Paulson and Peters will show up halfway through the season. It would be a very Murphy move for Paulson to be the Final Girl, or in the case of Freak Show, Final Girls.
American Horror Story: 1984 premieres on September 18.
(Via the Wrap)
