The Black Tapes finally gets its TV show, and Strand has a face
MGM+ ordered an eight episode The Black Tapes series with Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as Dr. Richard Strand, years after an NBC version stalled. How the show lines up with the podcast, and what to watch for next.
MGM+ has ordered The Black Tapes, an eight episode supernatural investigation series based on the 2015 horror podcast, with Nikolaj Coster-Waldau starring as Dr. Richard Strand. Deadline broke the order on Monday, October 26, 2026, and TV Insider confirms production starts in Vancouver in January 2027, with no premiere date yet.
I have a soft spot for this one. The Black Tapes was one of those podcasts people binged on long drives and then argued about in group chats, because it sounded close enough to a real investigative show that it could fool you for an episode or two. Getting that tone onto a screen is the whole job, and this time the people who made the podcast are in the room.
This is the second try
It is easy to miss in the casting headline, but this is not the first time The Black Tapes has gone to TV. Deadline notes that NBC developed a drama adaptation during the 2018 and 2019 development cycle, written and executive produced by Paul Bae, Terry Miles and Mathew Arnold. It did not go to pilot.
The new version is a straight series order, eight episodes, with a showrunner, a lead and a start date. That is a much more solid set of facts than the NBC attempt ever had in public.
A podcast built on skepticism finally has a skeptic with a face people already trust to be complicated.
Podcast versus series, from what is public
Here is how the MGM+ version lines up against the audio original, using the series logline and the episode descriptions on the official podcast site.
| The podcast | The MGM+ series | |
|---|---|---|
| Format | Serialized horror podcast from Pacific Northwest Stories, launched in 2015 | Eight episode drama for MGM+ |
| Creators | Terry Miles and Paul Bae | Miles and Bae write and executive produce; John Rogers is showrunner |
| Dr. Richard Strand | The skeptic whose past, and missing wife Coralee, drive the mystery | Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as a brilliant psychiatrist with a mysterious past |
| Alex | The show's host, chasing Strand's unsolved files | Alex Regan, an obsessed, relentless scientist, not yet cast |
| Setting | Episodes move through Seattle, Vancouver and Victoria | Shooting in Vancouver from January 2027 |
| Reach | Over 60 million downloads, per Deadline | Releasing on MGM+ in the U.S., UK, Ireland, Germany, Italy, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands and Latin America |
The row that matters most is Alex. In the podcast, she is the host, and you hear the whole story through her recorder. The series logline calls her a scientist. That is a real change. A host is a stand in for the listener. A scientist is a second expert in the room, which makes the show more of a two hander and less of a found footage diary. I think that is the right call for television, where nobody wants to watch someone narrate into a microphone for a whole season, but it is the first thing fans will poke at.
Why Coster-Waldau works on paper
Strand is a debunker, and the fun of the podcast was that he was usually more interesting than the ghost. You trusted his logic and distrusted his motives. Coster-Waldau spent years on Game of Thrones playing a man who was both the most capable person in the room and the one hiding the worst secret. That is Strand.
The risk is the opposite problem. Strand works because he sounds reasonable. If the show plays him as a brooding mystery man from minute one, you lose the skeptic and keep only the brooding.
The John Rogers factor
Rogers co-created Leverage and developed The Librarians, per Deadline, and the order reunites him with Michael Wright, now global head of MGM+, who oversaw those shows during his TNT run. Rogers told Deadline he was an early fan, and called the podcast "a unique blend of truly unsettling horror and puzzle-box conspiracy mystery."
Puzzle box is the key phrase. Leverage and The Librarians were good at case of the week structure with a bigger mystery humming underneath. The Black Tapes has exactly that shape: individual tapes, each one a haunting or a possession or a disappearance, and an occult conspiracy connecting them. If Rogers gives each episode its own tape and saves the conspiracy for the back half, this could be the rare podcast adaptation that is better binged than listened to.
Where it fits on MGM+
Deadline places it alongside From, which is headed into its fifth and final season, and The Institute, whose second season premieres November 8. Losing From means MGM+ needs a new long running mystery, and The Black Tapes is built for that slot. It also lands in a strong year for horror adaptations on TV. Stephen King's Carrie just got a second season on Prime Video, which I dug into in our look at Carrie's renewal numbers, and Peacock's Crystal Lake showed how much room there is between pure scares and something sadder.
What I am watching for next
- Who plays Alex Regan. She is the audience's way in, and right now she is a logline.
- How many tapes per episode. One case per hour plus the long mystery is the format I want.
- Whether the "is this real" feeling survives. The podcast's documentary voice was its best trick. A scripted drama has to find its own version of that.
- A premiere window. With cameras rolling in January, MGM+ has not given one, and I am not going to guess.
For now, this is good news with the right names attached. Miles and Bae are writing it, Rogers is running it, and Strand has a face. Go listen to season one while you wait. It still holds up on headphones at night.
How we made this: researched and drafted with AI assistance. Sources are linked in the piece.
How we made this: researched and drafted with AI assistance. Sources are linked in the piece.
Original commentary based on public reporting. Not a reprint. Editorial standards.