Guillermo del Toro could soon be taking HBO to the scene of the crime…

The premium cable network has optioned the 47-year-old Mexican filmmaker’s latest project, Nutshell Studies, a Hitchcockian drama about a 1950s small-town housewife who becomes obsessed with solving brutal crimes.

It’s a fictionalized TV adaptation based on Corinne May Botz’s The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death, which was an investigation into forensic pioneer Frances Glessner Lee, who founded Harvard’s Department of Legal Medicine in the 1930s, and later became a captain in the New Hampshire Police. Along the way, she constructed a series of dioramas based on real-life cases, which are still used for training purposes today.

del Toro will direct and executive-produce the project, which will be written by crime novelist and Southland writer Sara Gran.

It’s the latest project from del Toro, who has been developing a potential Hulk live-action series for ABC. On the big screen, the Oscar-nominated writer-director, best known for such films as Pan’s Labyrinth and Hellboy, is wrapping up work on the sci-fi adventure Pacific Rim, starring Idris Elba, Charlie Day, Charlie Hunnam and Ron Perlman.

“It’s a very, very beautiful poem to giant monsters,” says del Toro of the film. “Giant monsters versus giant robots.”