Ryan Murphy's 'The Shards' Adaptation Premieres August 5 on FX and Hulu

FX has set an August 5 premiere date for 'The Shards,' the television adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis's 2023 novel, which will air on FX and Hulu domestically and on Disney+ internationally. The series stars Igby Rigney as a fictionalized teenage Bret Ellis, an aspiring writer whose reality begins to unravel when a mysterious new student, Robert Mallory (Homer Gere, son of Richard Gere), transfers to his elite Los Angeles prep school just before senior year — a arrival that coincides with the growing terror of the Trawler, a serial killer targeting teenagers across the city. The ensemble cast also includes Kaia Gerber, Hayes Warner, Graham Campbell, Evan Rachel Wood, Wes Bentley, and Jordan Roth. The project had a complicated path to the screen: Ellis originally developed it at HBO in 2024, where director Luca Guadagnino was briefly attached, before the series stalled and was rescued by Ryan Murphy and FX in May 2025, with a series order following two months later. Ellis's novel itself was first released as a serialized audiobook — on his podcast in 2020 according to some sources — before being published in print in 2023. The series is produced by 20th Television in association with Ryan Murphy Television, with Max Winkler serving as director and executive producer alongside Murphy, Ellis, Nina Jacobson, Brad Simpson, and others.