Entertainment

Hulu's ‘Into The Dark’ Will Drop New Episodes On A Unique Schedule

Halloween is just about a month away, which means your TV is about to be filled with spooky movies and TV shows for the next few weeks. But if Freeform's "31 Nights Of Halloween" isn't quite scary enough for your taste, perhaps you'll be interested in Hulu's latest foray into horror: Into the Dark. But because streaming platforms' original content can kind of be whatever it wants these days, horror fans may be wondering: How many episodes of Into the Dark are there?

New episodes of TV shows used to come out once a week, live on TV. (Some still do!) But ever since streaming platforms creating original TV shows became a ~thing~, viewers have gotten used to entire seasons of shows being dropped at once, for optimal marathoning. But Into the Dark is changing all of that, and a new episode of the thriller will come out just once per month.

On the first Friday of every month, Hulu will post a new episode inspired by a holiday in that month, IndieWire reported. Hulu has already ordered 12 episodes of the show, meaning one new episode will come out every month all the way through September 2019, according to Dread Central.

Even though fans will have to wait an entire month for every new episode (which honestly sounds like a challenge), the length of each episode will make up for that. Every episode of Into The Dark will be feature-length, making the show evoke a movie more than a TV show, Variety reported. For example, the first episode, titled "The Body," is about 80 minutes long.

And, as you can probably guess based on its October release date, "The Body" is about Halloween. As per a review on JoBlo.com, the pilot episode is based on a 2013 short film, also called The Body. Just like the short film, the episode tells the story of a hitman tasked with disposing a dead body on Halloween, and he faces a bunch of interferences along the way. Additionally, the horrors of technology will be weaved throughout the show, à la Black Mirror.

In a teaser trailer for the show on YouTube, Hulu revealed a few holidays that the "year of fear" will cover in addition to Halloween. They include: Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's Eve, and April Fool's Day. For the other seven months of the year, I'm guessing Into the Dark will cover Valentine's Day, Saint Patrick's Day, Mother's Day (or Memorial Day?), Father's Day, and Independence Day — but I'm at a loss for what major holidays are in August. Any guesses?

"The Body" stars powerhouse actors including Tom Bateman, Dermot Mulroney, Rebecca Rittenhouse, and Tembi Locke, according to IMDb. No specific details have been released about the cast for upcoming episodes, so it will be interesting to see if the show uses the same characters and actors, or if it's an entirely new cast for every installment.

Into the Dark premieres on Hulu on Oct. 5. Just reading reviews of the show has already got me shuddering, so come October, you may catch me watching "31 Nights Of Halloween" instead.