The women behind ‘Sharp Objects’ wanted to bust the frilly female narrative

The opening night of the seventh annual ATX Television Festival brought out the big names Thursday with a world premiere screening and panel for HBO’s upcoming limited series “Sharp Objects.�

The psychological thriller, an adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s 2006 novel of the same name, is adapted by Marti Noxon (“Dietland,� “UnReal�) and stars Amy Adams as a reporter who returns to her hometown to cover the murders of two young girls. The eight-part miniseries is directed by Jean-Marc Vallée, who also helmed the first season of last year’s critically acclaimed “Big Little Lies.�

Adams, Flynn, Noxon and Valle took part in a panel following the screening and talked about taking the small-screen approach on the dark narrative that was originally envisioned by Jason Blum’s Alliance, which had optioned the book, as a feature film.

“Movies with complicated female leads don’t get the support and they don’t get the attention they deserve,� said Noxon, who championed telling the story as a TV series. “I’ve spent the last five or six years of my career taking ‘difficult women’ projects, or making them up, and putting them on TV instead.�

That struggle — and drive — to stretch the female narrative was part of the the impetus that led Flynn to write “Sharp Objects� more than a decade ago.

“I was working at [Entertainment Weekly] and I was reading tons, and ingesting a ton, of movies and TV,� Flynn said. “And what I was really discovering was there were a lot of stories of men and violence, and men and rage, and how they handle it, but not much on how women handle their anger and violence — particularly generationally. At the time, there was a lot of chick lit. Stories about women who shopped, and their big crisis was, ‘Can I find the right shoe? And get the right shoe? And get the right man and the right cosmopolitan?’ There was a lot of crickets at the time of trying to sell [“Sharp Objects�]. No one wants to hear this kind of story. No one wants to hear about women we can’t root for.�

“Sharp Objects� marks Adams’ return to television following an illustrious foray into film. And the series marks the first time she has served as an executive producer on a project.

“It’s something that I’ve been wanting to do, but just have been really focused and really busy on my feature career,� Adams said. “So when this presented itself … there was just such a camaraderie and such an understanding of what we were going to do, that I thought this was a wonderful opportunity to return to television. Television is in such a renaissance right now and it’s a wonderful place to tell stories.�

But the “Sharp Objects� experience also made it a bit of a challenge to return to film.

“It’s changed the way I’ve looked approaching a character,� Adams said. “I’m getting ready to go back and do something on film and I’m like, ‘Oh gosh, how am i going to tell this story in 1 hour and 20 minutes?’�

“Sharp Objects� will premiere July 8 on HBO.

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Twitter: @villarrealy