FX has released the official trailer for The Shards.

The trailer teases a salacious retro horror thrill ride that sees Ryan Murphy take on the acclaimed autofiction novel by Bret Easton Ellis (American Psycho). The series follows a group of students at an elite prep school in 1981 Los Angeles as a serial killer known as The Trawler stalks the city.

Igby Rigney (Midnight Mass) plays the protagonist, a fictional version of Bret Easton Ellis. The rest of the cast includes Homer Gere (Euphoria) and American Horror Story alumni Kaia Gerber and Wes Bentley. Gerber, Gere, Hayes Warner, and Graham Campbell play Bret’s fellow students.

The trailer begins with a meta framework as Bret pitches a story to a Hollywood producer (Bentley) about young people, filled with “sex”, “cocaine”, and “male hookers”. Aside from the overaching threat of The Trawler, the narrative centres on the tension between Bret and a new student who arrives senior year, Robert Mallory (Gere).

While Luca Guadagnino (Challengers) and Kristoffer Borgli (The Drama) were previously linked with the project, The Shards will blend the sensibilities of two provocative queer storytellers in Ryan Murphy and Bret Easton Ellis.

The Shards premieres with two episodes on Wednesday, August 5th on FX and Hulu in the US and Thursday, August 6th on Disney+ in the UK. New episodes will air and stream weekly.

Watch the trailer below.