The Curse Mixes HGTV With High Stakes Cringe

We don’t know much yet about Showtime’s upcoming comedy The Curse, but the small details we do know are enough to get us sufficiently excited: It’s created by Nathan Fielder and Benny Safdie, will star Safdie and Emma Stone, and be produced by A24. Need we say more? We don’t even care what the plot is.

Fielder and Safdie are masters of cringe and high stakes, which they deliver on a spectrum of lo-fi (Nathan for You, How To With John Wilson) and maximalist (Uncut Gems). They make things for those of us who daydream when in social situations or crowded public places about the most socially weird things we could do. Now, the duo is working together on comedy series about how an alleged curse threatens the relationship of a newly married couple who are co-starring on their own HGTV show Flipanthropy, as they try to conceive a child. The fictional couple might be reminiscent of Tarek El Moussa and Christina Haack, the HGTV couple whose marriage dissolved while still filming their series Flip or Flop. Guess it was a flop!

“The fierce intelligence and wit of the incomparable Emma Stone make her the perfect partner with the ingenious minds of the Safdie brothers and the subversive comedy of Nathan Fielder,” said Amy Israel, Executive Vice President, Scripted Programming, Showtime Networks Inc in a statement when the show was first announced. “Together, they promise to deliver a groundbreaking satire that is both unexpected and deeply human.”

We may have to keep waiting awhile for The Curse, but here’s everything we know about it in the meantime.

It’s been in the works for years now

The show has been a long time coming. It was first greenlit in December 2020, but nothing was filmed. Now, according to Film Updates, the show will start shooting in June.

It’s the Safdies’ first foray into TV

Josh and Benny Safdie are known for their high-adrenaline films like Good Time and Uncut Gems that leave you clutching the knee of the person next to you in a theater, but The Curse will mark the Safdies’ first foray into television. Stone made the jump to streaming a few years ago, when she starred in the Netflix dark comedy miniseries Maniacs.

Benny Safdie, Stone, and Fielder will all star

Though Safdie is primarily a director and Fielder often flexes as both a director and actor, the series will star all three. Fielder will play Stone’s husband and HGTV co-host, while Safdie will play the show’s producer.