Creator of Cape Fear TV show probably first heard about it from The Simpsons

Cape Fear TV show, starring Amy Adams and Javier Bardem, has distinctly modern menace Sat 11 Jul 2026 at 4:30am Like many millennials, American screenwriter Nick Antosca admits he probably first learned about Cape Fear from The Simpsons. A 1993 episode transplanted some of the 1991 movie's most memorable moments to animation, with Sideshow Bob stalking Bart Simpson the way Robert De Niro's Max Cady, a recently released prisoner, sought revenge against his former lawyer in Scorsese's version. The psychological thriller was then the most recent take on John D MacDonald's 1957 novel, The Executioners, first brought to the screen in 1962 by director J Lee Thompson. Antosca — the creator of horror anthology series Channel Zero and horror drama series Brand New Cherry Flavour — recalls his parents watching the 60s movie when he was a child. "I was watching a kid be pursued down empty hallways into a basement by a creepy guy," he says. "I asked my parents what it was and they explained to me the concept of stalking, which unsettled me." Not yet 10 years old he saw Scorsese's version — this time without his parents' guidance. "I was very disturbed," he says. "My relationship with Cape Fear is one of being mildly psychologically scarred by it." Now, Antosca has made his own Cape Fear: a TV series that muddies the moral certainty of its forebears and sees his Max Cady utilise distinctly modern methods of menace. Starring Javier Bardem as Cady, and Amy Adams (Arrival) and Patrick Wilson (Watchmen) as the married couple whose actions led to his imprisonment, Antosca's Cape Fear extends the book's violence and sense of paranoia across 10 episodes, bringing the story to a new hyper-online generation. "We live in a time when there is a lot of uncertainty about the truth," Antosca says. "There is a lot of misinformation, competing information, and a sense sometimes that villains are disguised as victims, and victims are turned into villains. "There's a lot of moral ambiguity in the culture right now, and a sense of paranoia, a feeling of being watched, and that our privacy is permeable." His Cape Fear reflects how those dual feelings of uncertainty and paranoia "seep through the cracks into our families and private lives". "Each version of Cape Fear is a really interesting reflection of the time in which it was made," Antosca says. "It's a very simple fable-like story of a family, an all-American family, an archetypal family, that's being terrorised by the bogeyman, by a monster. "But each version has different ideas about the justice system, about the American family, about the 'other', and I thought it would be really interesting to see what Cape Fear looked like in the present day." Shifting sympathies and 'true-crime celebrity' That question led Antosca to Scorsese, Stephen Spielberg, who produced the 1991 movie, and distributor Universal Pictures. He pitched to them the idea of Cady, accused of the murder of his pregnant wife, stalking two people — husband Tom Bowden and wife Anna who, before they got together, were the prosecutor and defence attorney on his case. "Their perfect life is built on Max Cady's conviction, on his suffering," Antosca says. When Cady is released — after new evidence suggests he was not the killer — Adams's Anna is a lawyer who works to free the wrongly convicted. "The idea that he's gotten out of prison because he's exonerated is very different than the earlier versions and raises interesting questions about the justice system, guilt and innocence," Antosca says. "It feels very contemporary." This puts the audience for the new Cape Fear on uneven ground — constantly questioning their convictions not only Cady's guilt or innocence, but whether the Bowdens' paranoia and fear is well-founded. "The audience is going to go on a real journey in terms of sympathy, and in terms of, whose rage is justified, what actions are justified?" Antosca says. That sense of sympathy is tied to the idea of Cady as a "true-crime celebrity" — an element Antosca says also brings Cape Fear into the 21st century. "That's come to the forefront of the culture in ways that it wasn't in 1991," he says. "I thought that also felt like part of a contemporary nightmare." The idea of "true-crime celebrity" is one Antosca has been interested in for years, as the creator of a slew of true-crime dramas, including A Friend of the Family, about the kidnappings of Jan Broberg in the 70s; Candy, about a woman accused of the axe murder of her neighbour in the 80s; and The Act, about Gypsy Rose Blanchard, who incited her boyfriend to kill her mother in 2015. He describes his interest as not just in true crime but the "atmosphere around it". "It's something I'm very aware of now, just because I'm a person in the culture in the 2020s," he says. That engagement with the spectacle of true crime wasn't the only way Antosca brought Cape Fear into the present. At the same time, he wanted to "honour the feeling" of the earlier versions, by, for instance, retaining composer Bernard Herrmann's 1962 score. "To me that score is the sound of dread," Antosca says. "It's really elemental, it's so simple and so menacing and visceral." What Antosca updated was the kinds of technologies someone might use to "terrorise or harass or stalk somebody" today. That means drones, texting and even online gaming — seemingly used by Cady to get at the Bowdens' two teenage children. "We weren't sitting in the writers' room thinking, 'Let's make it more millennial' or something," Antosca says. "It's just, naturally, what would you use in the present day? "In my neighbourhood, I've been walking down the street and there's a drone following me. I've had people come on my property and just sit in my backyard. "There's all sorts of very present-day sources of paranoia that appear in the show." Making horror thrillers in 2026 Episodes of Cape Fear are dropping weekly at a time when interest in horror and thrillers seems to be peaking. One of the show's Apple TV stablemates is Katie Dippold's comedy horror series Widow's Bay, starring Matthew Rhys (The Americans), which is an Emmys frontrunner, with 19 nominations, and already dominating "Best TV shows of the year" lists. It even has Guillermo del Toro's seal of approval. Meanwhile, at the cinema, Obsession by debut director Curry Barker, just 26 years old, has earned $US404 million across the globe, including $25 million in Australia, following Backrooms, from 21-year-old director Kane Parsons, making more than $US333 million worldwide. Antosca says audiences have always been drawn to horror. "Horror is evergreen to me," he says. "For me, horror feels like the most psychologically authentic genre. "I love it because I think you can go deep into the human psyche and explore visceral character fears. "You have to think about the audience in horror in a way that you don't to the same degree in some other genres. It's like comedy: either you laugh or you don't. [With horror] either you're scared or you're not." He suggests young filmmakers, creators and directors might be drawn to horror because they're "more in touch with the fears and terrors of childhood". "They're more in touch with whatever it is you access when you go to sleep and have a nightmare." Cape Fear is streaming on Apple TV.