Not to be confused with ‘Uglies,’ Ryan Murphy’s ‘The Beauty’ will see STDs gifting people physical perfection. Cute!

Say it once, say it twice; Ryan Murphy needs to settle all the way down. Hollywood may have been an out-and-out knockout, and his role in the rise of marginalized leads in episodic storytelling is something to be admired, but this is the guy on the Monster kick, and your mind needs be on some sort of journey to think that Jeffrey Dahmer and the Menendez brothers are healthy cruxes for entertainment in this day and age.

That’s to say that his next project, the FX drama we’ll know as The Beauty, is in theory less reprehensible than his dramatized biographies, but its premise promises a pretty gonzo, Murphy-coded swing nevertheless.

Indeed, The Beauty will feature a world wherein peak societal beauty can be obtained by contracting an unnamed sexually-transmitted disease. Exactly how Murphy plans on unpacking the thematic nuances of such a thing is both terrifying and irresistible to think about.

Per Deadline, past collaborators Evan Peters and Jeremy Pope are involved with the project, as are Anthony Ramos (Twisters) and Ashton Kutcher. The former three will also serve as executive producers on the project alongside Murphy and Matt Hodgson, the pair of whom will write the series.

The Beauty also marks Murphy’s first venture into comic book adaptations, with the series being based on the Image Comics series of the same name. The site’s official description of the comic book series describes a society obsessed with physical beauty; one that would be fascinated by the promise of becoming more beautiful with every passing day. This promise comes in the form of an STI, which is a red flag that far too many people choose to ignore, and one that carries some pretty dark and deadly consequences with it. Opposing this conspiratorial phenomenon are Detectives Drew Foster and Kara Vaughn, and opposing them are politicians, hitmen, federal agents, and a populace that doesn’t know any better.

Murphy is known to be secretive about his projects, and The Beauty, with its scarce details, seems to be no exception. One would therefore think that diving into a story based on pre-existing material would run counter to Murphy’s tendencies, but then again, Murphy has never been a stranger to helming adapted material before, so perhaps the question we should be asking is how his show will differ from the comic book that it’s based on.

At the time of writing, the 11-episode first season of The Beauty is eyeing a late-fall production start, and will be made to stream exclusively on FX once its undisclosed release date rears its head.