“True Detective” director Cary Fukunaga will helm a television series based on Caleb Carr's 1994 period crime novel "The Alienist," TheWrap reports.

Set in New York City in 1896, the novel follows Dr. Laszlo Kreizler — “alienist” was the term applied to the then-budding field of psychiatry —  as he joins forces with a newspaper reporter, a police department secretary and Police Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt to solve a string of gruesome murders. Carr revisited the characters in his 1997 sequel "The Angel of Darkness."

The project, which surfaced last May as part of a first-look deal between Paramount Television and Anonymous Content, will be executive produced by Eric Roth ("Forrest Gump"). Hossein Amini ("Drive," "47 Ronin"), who penned the pilot, will write the series and executive produce.

Fukunaga, who won an Emmy for his work on the first season of "True Detective," is currently busy with an adaptation of Stephen King's "It."