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LMGI COMPASS
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Winter 2025
With previous seasons featuring all-male leads and set in
Louisiana, California and the Ozarks, respectively, the execs
envisioned a fresh location and a new perspective with a female
protagonist. They found the perfect storyteller in Mexican-born
writer-director Issa López, who had been sketching out a plot for
a "whodunnit" even before HBO approached her to join the series.
López had always been fascinated by mystery novels and
stories of real-life unsolved murders. She recalled hearing of one
particularly grisly tale as a child known as "The Dyatlov Pass
Incident": In 1959, an experienced group of scientists from the
Soviet Union's Ural Institute had set out on foot for a research
expedition. They were later discovered not far from camp, with
some grotesquely frozen to death from what appeared to be some
gruesome physical trauma on the ice. What had happened during
the night that caused these men to cut their way out of their tents
and flee the campsite?
"The details don't make sense and they died in the ice," relates
López for screendaily.com, "so, I thought, 'murder mystery, ice,
the unexplainable demise of a group of people.'
"Now all I needed was everything else. The story, characters
and what happened to the men."
López pitched a modern take on the Dyatlov Pass incident as
the central mystery, resetting the series in Alaska and imbuing
the narrative with flourishes of indigenous culture, environmental
contamination and an unsolved murder.
Once the pilot was crafted, veteran producer Mari-Jo Winkler
joined the project and she and López headed to Alaska to flesh
out the details.
"We wanted to understand the culture of the Inupiaq indigenous
communities and the physical place, shares Winkler. "We scouted
in -22 degrees Fahrenheit, rode snowmobiles across the frozen
ocean and visited different locations that were scripted to get a
true sense of it all."
Alaska can get down to -40 degrees in the coldest months," adds
production designer Dan Taylor, "which seemed like too much, not
just for the crew, but for equipment as well."
"Iceland is a magical place.
We have an endless gallery of classical
nature, with a variety of looks. The light is
ever-changing, and the surreal drama of most
locations here is astounding."
—TRUENORTH LM EINAR SVEINN THORDARSON/LMGI
