MGM+’s adaptation of the hit horror podcast now has its skeptic and its believer, with production starting in Vancouver in January.
MGM+’s The Black Tapes has found its other half. Sosie Bacon will star opposite Nikolaj Coster-Waldau in the eight-episode supernatural horror series, based on the hit podcast created by Terry Miles and Paul Bae, completing the central partnership that powered the original audio drama.
Bacon plays Alex Regan, a brilliant, methodical physicist who joins the investigation as a debunker, only to find that her scientific training will not let her ignore mounting evidence that something beyond the natural world is at work. Coster-Waldau, whose casting MGM+ announced last week, plays Dr. Richard Strand, the psychiatrist with a mysterious past who leads the pair’s investigations into hauntings, possessions, disappearances and the sinister legends known as the black tapes. As they dig deeper, they uncover a hidden occult world and a centuries-old apocalyptic conspiracy.
Why Bacon Fits
Bacon has quietly become one of horror’s most reliable leads. She broke out in Parker Finn’s Smile, the 2022 hit that turned a modest studio horror film into a global sensation, and she understands how to sell terror without losing the audience’s trust. Next, she appears in Family Movie, a horror comedy made with her own family that premiered at SXSW this year and opens in theaters on April 23, 2027, through Variance Films. She also recently wrapped the second season of Amazon’s Scarpetta opposite Nicole Kidman and Jamie Lee Curtis, returning as reporter Abby Turnbull.
Pairing a horror veteran with a Game of Thrones star gives the series a strong core. The skeptic-and-believer dynamic has driven genre television since The X-Files, and the success of The Black Tapes will depend on how well these two play off each other.
The Podcast and the Team
The original The Black Tapes, which premiered in 2015 in the style of a public radio documentary, has passed 60 million downloads. Miles and Bae are writing and executive producing the adaptation and will both be in the writers’ room. John Rogers and Jennifer Court of Kung Fu Monkey Productions and Kearie Peak of Peak Pictures are also executive producers, and MGM+ Studios is producing.
The series joins FROM and The Institute on an MGM+ slate that is leaning hard into horror. Production begins in Vancouver in January 2027, and the show will stream on MGM+ in the U.S., the U.K., Ireland, Germany, Italy, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands and Latin America.
