TV News Roundup: Freeform to Develop Stephen King Series ‘Joyland’

By Nate Nickolai

LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – In today’s TV news roundup, Freeform announced the development of the new Stephen King series “Joyland” and Netflix renewed “Castlevania” for a third season. 

DATES

Oxygen’s upcoming TV docu-special “Up and Vanished” is set to premiere Nov. 18 at 7 p.m. ET/PT. Based on a true-crime podcast of the same name, “Up and Vanished” will follow the case of
Tara Grinstead, a school teacher and former beauty queen, who went missing from Ocilla, Georgia, in 2005. Original host Payne Lindsey will return for the special, picking up the case from where the podcast left off in 2017.

DEVELOPMENT

Freeform announced the development of the new series “Joyland” based on the 

novel of the same name. The show will follow college student Devin who must confront the legacy of a vicious murder after taking a summer job at a North Carolina amusement park. Cyrus Nowrasteh is set to write the pilot with Bill Haber’s Ostar Productions and Chris Peña executive producing.

RENEWALS

Netflix has renewed “” for a third season. Inspired by the classic video game series of the same name, the
dark medieval fantasy follows the last surviving member of the disgraced Belmont clan who is trying to save Eastern Europe from the evil forces of Count Dracula and his vampire war council. Sam Deats is directing with Warren Ellis, Adi Shankar, Fred Seibert and Kevin Kolde executive producing.

RATINGS

Univision’s world premiere of “Amar a Muerte,” averaged 1.5 million viewers Monday night, with 687,000 of those in the adults 18-49 demographic. It made Univision the number one Spanish-language network among total viewers and adults 18-49 in the 10 p.m. time slot.

“The Conners” held steady on ABC on Tuesday night, with the rest of ABC’s comedy lineup improving over their performances last week. “The Rookie” was even for the network at 10.