In 2002, director
Mick Garris invited some director friends to an informal dinner at a restaurant in
Sherman Oaks, California. The original ten "masters" attending were
John Carpenter,
Larry Cohen,
Don Coscarelli,
Joe Dante,
Guillermo del Toro,
Stuart Gordon,
Tobe Hooper,
John Landis,
William Malone, and Garris himself. Subsequently, Garris organized regular dinners with the group and invited other horror and other genre directors to attend, including
Dario Argento,
Eli Roth,
Wes Craven,
David Cronenberg,
Tim Sullivan,
Rob Zombie,
Bryan Singer,
Fred Dekker,
William Lustig,
Lucky McKee,
Ernest Dickerson,
Katt Shea,
Quentin Tarantino,
Robert Rodriguez,
James Gunn,
Mary Lambert,
Tom Holland,
Peter Medak,
Ti West,
Lloyd Kaufman, and others. In 2005, Garris created and produced an original anthology television series of one-hour movies, written and directed by many of the "masters," which was originally broadcast in the United States on the
Showtime cable network. In several international territories, the films were released theatrically. The series debuted to excellent reviews in the U.S. on October 28, 2005, with the premiere episode "Incident On and Off a Mountain Road," co-written and directed by
Don Coscarelli, based on the short story by
Joe R. Lansdale. New episodes premiered every Friday at 10 p.m. EST throughout the series' two seasons. The show followed an
anthology series format, with each episode featuring a one-hour film directed by a well-known
horror film director. In 2009,
Chiller began airing the show on their Sunday evening line-up of shows, and in 2010,
Reelz Channel began airing episodes of
Masters of Horror edited (despite keeping its
TV-MA rating) and with commercials. ==Series overview==