“Helltown”- Exploring the Latest Adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut’s Experience With a Serial Killer

What is the New Movie ‘Helltown’ Based On?

Can you imagine Kurt Vonnegut portrayed as handsome, or even sexy? Welp, the new series Helltown plans to deliver. Oscar Isaac is going to star in a new crime thriller series for Amazon Studios titled Helltown. The project is based on the book written by Casey Sherman, and it’s being developed by Severance co-executive producer Mohamad El Masri, who will also serve as showrunner and writer.

The hour-long, eight-episode series follows the life of Kurt Vonnegut before he became known to the world as a renowned author. “In 1969 Kurt was a struggling novelist and car salesman living life with his wife and five children on Cape Cod. When two women disappear and are later discovered murdered underneath the sand dunes on the outskirts of Provincetown, Kurt becomes obsessed and embroiled in the chilling hunt for a serial killer and forms a dangerous bond with the prime suspect.”

There’s a lot of great talent involved with this project with Severance being a huge hit for Apple and All Quiet on the Western Front coming off four Oscar wins including best international feature film, best production design, best original score, and best cinematography.

Cast & Crew Behind the Making of ‘Helltown’: Who is Involved?

In 1969, Kurt Vonnegut was deeply intrigued by the disappearance & the murder of two women in Provincetown, causing him to draw close to the prime suspect and form a perilous relationship.

In addition to Robert and Susan Downey’s Team Downey production house, Amanda Burrell and Oscar Isaac will also be executive producers. All four of them are expected to make a great creative combination.

Oscar Isaac in "Helltown"
Oscar Isaac in “Helltown”

Isaac truly deserves a chance to demonstrate his acting prowess with this project. It’s the perfect platform for him to show off his talent and shine!

Oscar Isaac, who is popularly known for his spellbinding short roles, is said to be in talks to portray the young Kurt Vonnegut in the upcoming 8-episode crime thriller Helltown.

As reported by Variety yesterday:

Helltown centers on Kurt Vonnegut (Isaac) before he was a renowned author and cultural lightning rod. In 1969 Kurt was a struggling novelist and car salesman living life with his wife and five children on Cape Cod. Shockingly, two women have vanished and are discovered dead beneath the sand dunes near Provincetown. This stirs up Kurt’s curiosity, driving him to investigate a serial killer and link up with the primary suspect in an incredibly dangerous manner.

Based on Casey Sherman’s 2022 book of the same name, “Helltown,” the series will be shown by Mohamad El Masri (Severance) and produced by All Quiet on the Western Front director Ed Berger.

If talks prove successful, Moon Knight’s star will be added to the distinguished group of outrageously attractive men who have portrayed writers with normal or unfortunate looks.

Other members of the order include Jude Law, who played Thomas Wolfe in Genius; Joseph Fiennes, who played William Shakespeare in Shakespeare in Love; Javier Bardem, who played Ramón Sampedro in The Sea Inside; Matt Dillon, who played Charles Bukowski in Factotum; Tom Hiddleston, who played F. Scott Fitzgerald in Midnight in Paris; and, of course, Daniel Radcliffe, who played Allen Ginsberg in Kill Your Darlings.


Helltown: The Untold Story of a Serial Killer on Cape Cod

The year 1969: The hippie scene is vibrant in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Long-haired teenagers roam the streets, strumming guitars and preaching about peace and love…and Tony Costa is at the center of it all. To a certain group of smitten young women, he is known as Sire—the leader of their counterculture movement, the charming man who speaks eloquently and hands out hallucinogenic drugs like candy. But beneath his benign persona lies a twisted and uncontrollable rage that threatens to break loose at any moment. Tony Costa is the most dangerous man on Cape Cod, and no one who crosses his path is safe.  

When young women begin to disappear, Costa’s natural charisma and good looks initially protect him from suspicion. But as the bodies are discovered, the police close in on him as the key suspect. Meanwhile, local writers Kurt Vonnegut and Norman Mailer are locked in a desperate race to secure their legacies as great literary icons—and they both set their sights on Tony Costa and the drug-soaked hippie culture that he embodies as their next promising subject, launching independent investigations that stoke the competitive fires between two of the greatest American writers.  

Immersive, unflinching, and shocking, Helltown is a landmark true-crime narrative that transports us back to the turbulent late 1960s, reveals the secrets of a notorious serial killer, and unspools the threads connecting Costa, Vonnegut, and Mailer in the seaside city that played host to horrors unlike any ever seen before. New York Times best-selling author Casey Sherman has crafted a stunner.


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Published by Mind On Fire Books

I have always been attracted to the metaphysical; this blog and press is my exploration of the interjacent genres of horror, sci-fi, and fantasy. ​

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