Ryan Murphy's next series looks a little familiar

In the past month, we've seen two very different takes on the sci-fi concept of a mysterious and nefarious procedure that instantly makes you hotter—one pretty great (The Substance) and one not so much (Uglies). Maybe the grotesquerie on display in at least one of those films worked as a bat signal for Ryan Murphy, who just announced that he was taking his own stab at the genre today.

Deadline reports that Murphy's newest project will be called The Beauty and is set to go into production for its 11-episode first season this fall. While The Beauty's timing encourages the above comparisons, the show will actually be based on a graphic novel series from 2016. Written by Jeremy Haun and Jason A. Hurley, the books, per Deadline, are about "an STD that makes those affected beautiful. But the disease, dubbed 'the Beauty,' eventually kills its hosts as part of a suspected sinister government plot. The main characters in the comics are detectives Drew Foster and Kara Vaughn, partners on beauty crime cases who have to find their way past corrupt politicians, vengeful federal agents, and a terrifying mercenary out to collect the price on their heads."

Never one to shy away from controversy, Murphy has asked Ashton Kutcher to join the cast despite recent scrutiny over the actor's ties to convicted rapist Danny Masterson and indicted music mogul Sean "Diddy" Combs. As of this writing, Kutcher will be joined by Murphy mainstay Evan Peters, Twisters' Anthony Ramos, and Pose star Jeremy Pope. The trade reports that the production is still searching for a female star to play Kara; one of the four men (presumably Peters) is expected to step into the male lead role, with Kutcher potentially playing some sort of tech billionaire. No official details have been revealed as of this writing.

The fact that this sounds almost identical to other projects right now is typical of Murphy's oeuvre. He's taken to skimming from his own catalog recently with Grotesquerie, which Brian Tallerico deems "American Horror Story meets Seven" in his review for The A.V. Club, and Monsters, American Crime Story, and American Sports Story, which are like a true-crime flavored Neapolitan sundae. The Beauty may be Murphy's first venture into biological warfare that makes you hotter, but who's to say whether it will be his last.