FX's The Beauty comparisons to The Substance have been shut down thanks to one detail

Warning: Spoilers ahead

FX's hotly-anticipated show, The Beauty, has finally landed on our screens, and fans have already dubbed it Ryan Murphy's 'wildest' creation yet.

The show reunites names from Murphy's former American Horror Story cast, including Evan Peters with the likes of Bella Hadid, Isabella Rossellini, and Anthony Ramos for the 11-episode body horror.

The TL;DR of the plot is that "the world of high fashion turns dark when international supermodels begin dying in gruesome and mysterious way" down to a "sexually transmitted virus that transforms ordinary people into visions of physical perfection, but with terrifying consequences."

Episode one starts with a bang to say the least - with Bella Hadid's character, Ruby, walking at Paris Fashion Week, before everything goes awry.

FX

The model switches and launches herself into the crowd at a spectator, in a bid to get hold of their bottle of water.

She then goes on animalistic rampage on a hunt for more water, which includes stealing a paparazzi photographer's motorbike (and subsequently getting hit by a car), before ending up in a handgun stand-off with a cafe customer.

Soon, riot police show up and just as they're about to aim their weapons at her, blood begins streaming from her eye...and well, she explodes like a bomb.

And that's just the first few minutes of the show.

"That was one of the most insane openings to a Ryan Murphy show ever", one person wrote.

"Ryan Murphy is a sick f*** (complimentary)", another joked.

While it's set a high bar for the rest of the series, which will conclude in March, there's been one obvious comparison: The Substance.

For those who haven't seen the 2024 movie starring Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley, it's similarly a body horror concept that focuses around the societal pressures of beauty and ageing.

A faded Hollywood film star (played by Moore) becomes entranced by the prospect of a new blackmarket drug that promises users a "younger, more beautiful, more perfect" appearance. That is, until, Elisabeth starts experiencing side effects that are nothing short of horrifying.

Ironically, Demi Moore's ex-husband, Ashton Kutcher, plays Byron Forst in The Beauty, a power-hungry tech billionaire responsible for dishing out the beauty-inducing drug in the first place.

Mubi

"So this the tv version of the movie Substance?", one fan wrote when the trailer for The Beauty was initially released, with many others quickly following suit.

However, it's worth noting that there's one key detail in the show that proves it wasn't inspired by the Oscar nominee. In fact, it was created long before the movie.

The Beauty was originally a comic book series by Jason A. Hurley, which ran for 30 issues from 2015 until 2021 at Image Comics.

To coincide with the release of the show, it's being revived once more, with three all-new editions co-written by series creators Jeremy Haun and Jason A. Hurley, with art by Haun, Mike Huddleston, Brett Weldele, and Stephen Green.

“This new series gives us the opportunity to explore aspects of The Beauty, the physiological changes it makes to the body, we never touched on the first time around. It’s great to be able to play around in the world we created again,” added co-creator and writer Jason A. Hurley.

In the opposing camp, The Substance's director, Coralie Fargeat, has already her said her muse for the movie was her own personal anxieties around ageing, as well as reference points including David Cronenberg's The Fly, Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, The Elephant Man, and Requiem for a Dream.

You can never have too much of a good thing, if you ask us.

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