Turow’s Suspect Moves Forward at Hulu with Cerar and Miller
Hulu is developing Suspect, a drama series based on Scott Turow’s 2022 novel, with Marissa Jo Cerar, Bruce Miller and Matt Shakman attached. The project gives the streamer another private-investigator adaptation in motion, following its separate development of The Kid Detective.
Turow’s Pinky heads to Hulu
Suspect centers on Pinky, a private investigator who searches for evidence to exonerate a female police chief accused of extorting sex from male officers in exchange for job promotions. Turow described the book’s protagonist as an “oddball private investigator,” and he announced the deal last fall after Shakman optioned the material for a streaming series.
Cerar wrote Suspect and is executive producing with Miller, Shakman, Turow and MGM. 20th Television is the studio, which puts the series inside a familiar television pipeline rather than a one-off literary buy. That combination points to a project built to move, not sit, especially with Cerar and Miller already inside Hulu’s orbit.
Cerar and Miller’s Hulu track record
Cerar was a writer and supervising producer on the third season of Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale, and she later created, executive produced and showran ABC’s Women of the Movement and Hulu’s Black Cake. Miller is the creator, executive producer and showrunner of The Testaments, which was recently renewed for a second season after amassing 45 million hours streamed globally to date.
That pairing makes Suspect look less like an opportunistic book grab and more like a controlled extension of Hulu’s existing prestige-drama bench. The streamer is leaning on writers and producers who already understand serialized tension, literary source material and the demands of a service that measures success in hours streamed as much as buzz.
Shakman’s producer-director role
Shakman is attached as producer-director after recently wrapping directing the pilot and finale of Wild Things for Apple TV. He previously produced and directed WandaVision for Marvel/Disney+, directed the pilots for Monarch: Legacy of Monsters and The Great, and is set to direct and produce a new Planet of the Apes for 20th Century Studios.
His initial option on Suspect gave the novel a path into television before Hulu entered the picture, and that matters because the project now sits with a creator-director team that has already handled premium franchise material. For readers tracking Hulu’s drama slate, the practical takeaway is simple: Suspect is not just in development, it is being assembled with people who have recent, high-output TV credits and a studio structure already in place.
