NBC plans TV mini-series remake of 'Rosemary's Baby'

NBC set to begin shooting for mini-series based on Ira Levin 1967 horror novel brought to big screen by Roman Polanski

Rosemary's Baby is poised to wail demonically again – on the small screen. The US network NBC is planning a television mini-series based on Ira Levin's eponymous horror novel, published in 1967 and adapted for Roman Polanski's 1968 chiller, according to Slash Film.

The network, which has broadcast series based on Hannibal Lecter and Dracula, has set The Wire's Agnieszka Holland to direct the four-part serial.

The TV version of Rosemary's Baby is reportedly based on Levin's bestselling book, rather than Polanski's film, about a young woman facing satanic horrors in a Manhattan apartment block. The action will be transferred from New York to Paris by the screenwriters Scott Abbott (Introducing Dorothy Dandridge) and James Wong (American Horror Story).

Levin's novel centres around a young couple who move into an imposing Gothic-revival Manhattan apartment block, which they are told has a sinister history. In Polanski's paranoiac adaptation, Rosemary, played by Mia Farrow, becomes increasingly convinced that her unborn child is being targeted for ritual sacrifice by the building's eccentric tenants, who appear to have made an unholy alliance with her struggling actor husband. The reality turns out to be even more terrifying.

An earlier cinema remake of the Polanski adaptation faltered four years ago following negative reactions online. Michael Bay's much-maligned Platinum Dunes production company, which has brought poorly received reboots of A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Friday the 13th to multiplexes, had threatened to resurrect Rosemary's Baby alongside a new version of Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds.

The shoot for NBC's version of Rosemary's Baby may begin in France as early as January. There are no casting details yet.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media 2013