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On Sept. 8, 2017, New Line Cinema/Warner Bros. Pictures released It: Chapter One, the first of two movies based on the classic 1986 novel by Stephen King and a film destined to go down in cinema history as the highest grossing horror movie of all time, earning $701 million worldwide against a measly budget of $40 million or so.
It: Chapter One proved that a mainstream, high-quality, studio-backed picture could still be made from King’s work, after a nearly 20-year period in which many adaptations either did moderately well (1408), bombed outright (Dreamcatcher), or vanished into VOD hell (Cell, A Good Marriage).
Naturally, eager studios and producers unveiled a new wave of King adaptations in It’s wake, for theaters, cable, and hungry-for-content streamers. For a while, it seemed like every week brought the announcement of a new King title. But seven years, one global pandemic, and two industry strikes later, many of these projects have yet to make it in front of cameras or onto platforms.
What Happened to the Stephen King-naissance?
In the years following the release of It: Chapter One, several more King-based movies did in fact come out — and all underperformed. It: Chapter Two earned $473 million worldwide in 2019 – nice, but nearly 35 percent below Chapter One. A heavily promoted (and awful) remake of Pet Sematary, issued in April 2019, stalled at a mere $113 million worldwide (a 2023 prequel, Pet Sematary: Bloodlines, went directly to Paramount+ and died there…s ometimes dead is better).
Doctor Sleep, director Mike Flanagan’s excellent adaptation of King’s The Shining sequel, was a bust in late 2019, topping off at just $72 million globally. A half-baked 2022 remake of Firestarter barely made an impression with either theatergoers or streamers. While it’s harder to calculate how TV or streaming projects did, limited series like CBS All Access’s The Stand and Apple TV+’s Lisey’s Story came and went without adding anything to the pop culture conversation, although HBO’s limited series based on The Outsider garnered more attention.
Meanwhile, Hulu’s J.J. Abrams-produced anthology series Castle Rock was canceled after two underwhelming seasons, while MGM+’s Chapelwaite (based loosely on an early King short story) lasted only one. The TV series Mr. Mercedes, based on King’s Bill Hodges trilogy, was a moderate three-season success on first the now-defunct Audience network and then Peacock.
The ‘Sematary’ of Lost King Projects
Some of the King-based projects we last surveyed here have either been released (The Boogeyman in theaters, Mr. Harrigan’s Phone on Netflix) or are still in some sort of active development or even production. Others have seemingly vanished or stalled. Whether that was due to the pandemic, the actors’ and writers’ strikes, a lack of financing, an unsatisfying script, or all of the above — not to mention the cooler response to post-It King projects — is not always clear.
Film or TV projects like The Bone Church, From a Buick 8, The Dark Half (remake), The Eyes of the Dragon, The Little Green God of Agony, Joyland, Mile 81, Rest Stop, Revival, Sleeping Beauties, Suffer the Little Children, Throttle…
all have gone silent for years or been scrapped, while Overlook – a high-profile The Shining prequel series from Abrams’ Bad Robot company – was canceled outright by HBO before it even went into production.
Yet while King-mania has waned over the past several years, there are still a bounty of King works out there, just waiting to slither onto theater screens or your widescreen TV. Let’s take a look and see whether they’re ready to pounce or destined to be consigned to a dark, musty tomb.
Billy Summers
One of King’s most enjoyable recent best-sellers, Billy Summers tells the archetypal story of a professional hitman who is enticed into taking one last job before he retires from the scene, only to have the table turned on him by the very person who hires him. Billy – whose strict moral code only allows him to kill truly bad men – also befriends a young woman whom he rescues from rapists while hiding out to avoid his own assassination.
It’s a terrific, page-turning crime thriller and character study (with barely a whiff of the supernatural) and it’s no wonder that J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot company picked up the rights just months after the book’s summer 2021 publication, initially intending to adapt it as a miniseries. That plan has changed now, with a feature film – possibly starring Leonardo DiCaprio – on the menu instead (we think the book works better as a feature than a drawn-out limited series). Many projects never escape development hell at Bad Robot, though the company has managed to churn out several King projects (Lisey’s Story, 11.22.63), so we’ll see if Billy Summers joins the list. But it’s been a year and a half since we’ve last heard anything.
Christine
Blumhouse teamed in 2021 with Sony Pictures and director/writer Bryan Fuller on a fresh version of King’s classic haunted car story, which was filmed by John Carpenter in 1983 with mixed results. Deadline announced the remake in June 2021 and a script was apparently completed and turned in later that year — although King told the Bangor Daily News in February 2022 (via Movieweb) that he was doubtful about whether it was actually going to get made.
To be honest, we’d be surprised if Fuller is still involved, since the mastermind behind shows like Pushing Daisies and Hannibal has been better at leaving projects in the past decade (like Star Trek: Discovery and American Gods) than seeing them through. Blumhouse itself has been largely silent about the film since 2021; if the nearly unwatchable 2022 Firestarter is any indication, perhaps the company should take a time-out from developing any more King-based stories.
The Dark Tower
With adaptations of Gerald’s Game and Doctor Sleep already under his belt, and undeterred by his failed attempt to adapt Revival, horror auteur Mike Flanagan has not only completed yet another King-based movie (more on that below), but wants to tackle the great white whale of the horror master’s bibliography: The Dark Tower. King’s cornerstone series of novels, which blend the Western, horror, sci-fi, and fantasy genres and serve as a linchpin for many of his other works, was adapted disastrously as a film in 2017, with Amazon attempting and abandoning a TV series version of the eight-book saga in 2019.
Flanagan and producing partner Trevor Macy acquired the rights to The Dark Tower in late 2022, signaling their intent to fashion it into a five-season series and two feature films. Since then, Flanagan has signed on for a new Exorcist film, while insisting to Collider that work on The Dark Tower was proceeding as well. Flanagan also has a production deal with Amazon, with an exec there telling The Wrap that – despite the company’s previous abandoned attempt at adapting the books — they are “in weekly conversations” with Flanagan about giving it another go.
Elevation
One of the shortest King books in recent memory (clocking in at 144 pages – more a novella than a novel), 2018’s Elevation tells the story of a man named Scott Carey who begins to inexplicably lose weight. It might be more accurate to say he’s losing mass, because while Carey appears healthy, he begins to become unmoored from the Earth and faces the danger of literally floating away.
It’s an odd, melancholy, yet strangely hopeful tale (there’s a subplot involving Carey’s attempts to help a lesbian couple fight off bigotry as they open a restaurant in his small town), and writer-director-producer Jack Bender casually mentioned to Cinemablend in February 2021 that he had written a film treatment for it. Bender has some fairly extensive King-related experience, working on shows like Mr. Mercedes and The Outsider, but we haven’t heard a word about this one since.
Fairy Tale
Fairy Tale is another one of King’s recent works – and also a highly acclaimed one – that was snapped up for adaptation literally as it was being stocked on bookstore shelves. The tome’s September 2022 publication was also met by the news that director/producer Paul Greengrass had obtained the rights to the book from King, with the filmmaker taking the property out to auction and eventually setting it up at Universal after a bidding war.
Strangely, little has been heard about the project since, so we can only hope it hasn’t disappeared into the black hole of development like so many others. The book – about a teenage boy who leads a battle against evil in a hidden, alternate world – is sort of atypical material for Greengrass, whose gritty, hand-held style has been in the past more suited to films like his Bourne sequels and United 93. Whether he plans to change things up for a different, dark fantasy aesthetic remains unknown for now.
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon
This has always seemed like an odd one to us, since King’s relatively slim 1999 novel basically takes place mostly inside the head of a little girl who gets lost in the woods while hiking with her family. She begins to hallucinate, first talking to her favorite baseball player, former Red Sox pitcher Tom Gordon, and then coming to believe she is being stalked by an evil supernatural entity. It’s similar in some ways to the more adult Gerald’s Game, which was also thought to be unfilmable and yet was done pretty successfully by director Mike Flanagan, so maybe there’s a way to do this one too.
In any case, George A. Romero had it in development for years, and his family has still been pushing to get it made even after their patriarch’s death in 2017. A film version was announced in August 2019, and in November 2020 (via THR), Lynne Ramsay (You Were Never Really Here) was attached to direct and co-write the feature. Little has been heard since, and tellingly the movie does not currently appear on Ramsay’s IMDb page.
Holly
As we mentioned earlier, producer Jack Bender has been involved in numerous Stephen King adaptations, from Under the Dome to The Outsider, and in addition to another one on this list (right below, in fact), he surprisingly announced in February 2024 that he was developing an adaptation of King’s 2023 novel Holly, starring the popular OCD-afflicted private detective with savant-like intuitive powers who has also appeared in King’s Bill Hodges trilogy and The Outsider.
As also noted earlier, Bender developed and co-produced the Mr. Mercedes TV series, in which Holly was a main cast member played by Justine Lupe. She was also portrayed by Cynthia Erivo in HBO’s adaptation of The Outsider. With Bender having worked extensively with Lupe on Mr. Mercedes, it remains to be seen whether he’d reteam with her for Holly or go in a different direction, perhaps with a bigger name. There’s no word yet on a streaming or cable home for the project, or how far along it is in development.
The Institute
King’s novel about a sinister facility that houses children with powers like telekinesis or telepathy was announced as a TV series literally on the same day that it was published (September 10, 2019). Spyglass Media Group announced (via Deadline) that it was developing the limited series, with David E. Kelley and Jack Bender (the same team behind King-based series Mr. Mercedes) attached to write and direct the project respectively.
Nothing was heard about the show for a while after that, despite the involvement of heavyweights like Kelley (Big Little Lies) and Bender (Lost), but the latter confirmed in late 2023 that the show was still in active development. In June 2024, it was picked up by MGM+ and ordered straight to series, with Mary-Louise Parker (Weeds) and Ben Barnes (Shadow and Bone) signed up to star. No premiere date has been announced, but production was slated to begin later in 2024 in Nova Scotia.
It: Welcome to Derry
We’re not keen on the idea of prequels, but since Warner Discovery is keen on the idea of milking every possible property it owns dry until it turns to dust, we’re getting a new series on HBO (and Max) in 2025 called It: Welcome to Derry, which will serve as a prequel to It: Chapter One and It: Chapter Two. Among the show’s executive producers are Andy Muschietti and his sister Barbara; the former, of course, directed the two It movies while the latter co-produced. Andy has also apparently directed several episodes of Welcome to Derry, with the nine-episode first season recently wrapping production.
The cast includes Jovan Adepo (The Stand, 3 Body Problem), Taylour Paige (Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F), James Remar, Chris Chalk, Stephen Rider, Madeleine Stowe, and others. Most importantly, Bill Skarsgård is returning in the pivotal role of Pennywise the Dancing Clown, which first catapulted him to fame in the It films. The show is reportedly set in the 1960s and will chronicle events in the titular Maine town leading up to the films, while providing more of the origin story for Pennywise itself.
The Jaunt
This 1981 short story, one of King’s very best, was announced as a feature film in 2015 by Plan B, Brad Pitt’s production company. Although It director Andy Muschietti and his sister, producer Barbara Muschietti, were attached to the project in 2017, the project went quiet — that is, until Deadline revealed that Fear the Walking Dead co-creator Dave Erickson was going to develop the story as a series proposition for MRC Television.
Like the movie version, nothing has been heard about this iteration either, and frankly, we’re not really sure that “The Jaunt” would work as a TV series. It’s a relatively brief story set in a future where teleportation is widely used – but with certain requirements. The story really hinges on its shock ending, one of the best in King’s entire catalog. You can find it in his Skeleton Crew collection – and we advise you to read it there, since we doubt this one will show up in a screen anytime soon.
Later
Even Constant Readers like us tend to get behind on King’s books, because the man publishes so many of them. But we recently finished this atypically compact (under 300 pages) novel, a paperback original that King released through the independent pulp thriller outfit Hard Case Crime. The crime/horror hybrid follows a young boy named Jamie Conklin, who can see dead people…although this is decidedly not The Sixth Sense: since the dead must answer truthfully any question that Jamie puts to them, people close to him attempt to exploit his talents for shady or even corrupt purposes.
Deadline revealed in January 2022 that horror hit factory Blumhouse had acquired the rights to Later with intentions of turning it into a limited series – a strange choice indeed for a book that is far shorter than King’s usual tomes – with Elementary star Lucy Liu attached to play Jamie’s mother. Raelle Tucker (True Blood) penned a pilot script, but – in a recurring motif around here – nothing has been heard about the series since.
The Life of Chuck
We mentioned earlier that Mike Flanagan had recently completed a feature film based on a King story, and this is it: first published in King’s 2020 collection If It Bleeds, “The Life of Chuck” is a strange novella told in three parts and reverse chronological order, all somehow tied to the life of Charles “Chuck” Krantz and his bizarre impact on the people around him and the crumbling world they inhabit.
It’s difficult material to adapt, but if anyone can do it, it’s Flanagan. Tom Hiddleston stars as Chuck in the film, joined by a stacked cast that includes Karen Gillan, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Mark Hamill, Jacob Tremblay, Carl Lumbly, and Mia Sara. Filmed in late 2023, The Life of Chuck is slated to premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2024, although as of yet the project does not have distribution.
The Long Walk
Perhaps King’s best novel under the Richard Bachman name – if not the favorite among fans as well – The Long Walk is set in a dystopian future America where a totalitarian government forces 100 teenage boys to participate in a nationally televised contest in which they must walk US Route 1 without stopping or falling below four miles an hour. Contestants who do either are shot to death by soldiers, and there can only be one winner.
Predating like-minded franchises such as The Hunger Games or Squid Game by decades, the novel (the first King ever wrote, starting in college) has long been a source of interest for filmmakers. Most notably, Frank Darabont – a King specialist with The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, and The Mist all on his filmography – tried to develop it for years. Darabont’s option finally lapsed and New Line Cinema snapped up the rights in 2018, with Andre Øvredal (Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark) tapped to direct. But New Line let it go too, and Lionsgate picked it up… and this time the story ends differently.
Because you see, kids, The Long Walk is finally coming to the screen. Perhaps eyeing it as a male-oriented version of The Hunger Games, Lionsgate has tapped Francis Lawrence (who’s helmed the last four Hunger Games films) to direct, with principal photography beginning in July 2024. The cast includes Cooper Hoffman, David Jonsson (currently stealing Alien: Romulus as the android Andy), Charlie Plummer, Judy Greer, and Mark Hamill, with a 2025 release likely but not confirmed.
The Monkey
Did you enjoy the sleeper horror hit Longlegs at the movies recently? Did you know that while waiting for that movie to come out, writer-director Osgood Perkins stealth-filmed a new feature in February/March 2024 – and it’s based on the Stephen King story “The Monkey”? The film stars Theo James as twin brothers who try to rid their lives of a cursed toy monkey that has long been in their family and whose banging cymbals mean that someone is going to die.
Perkins is one of the more eclectic genre directors out there, with The Blackcoat’s Daughter and Gretel and Hansel also to his name, but this marks the first time that he’s adapted previously existing material by another writer. The cast also includes Tatiana Maslany (She-Hulk: Attorney at Law) and Elijah Wood. Neon picked up the film for distribution – no doubt very interested in staying in the Perkins business after snatching up Longlegs – and will release The Monkey on February 21, 2025.
The Running Man
In February 2021, it was announced that Edgar Wright (Last Night in Soho) had been tapped by Paramount Pictures to co-write and direct a new adaptation of King’s early dystopian novel, which was originally published under the Richard Bachman pseudonym.
A 1987 movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and directed by Paul Michael Glaser retained the basic idea of a game show in which a man is hunted all over the world by assassins. But it took a more satirical, action-oriented bent than King’s bleak, bitter novel. Wright was interested in taking the new version back to the dark tone of the book.
Not much was heard about the project until April 2024, when Paramount announced at CinemaCon that red-hot star Glen Powell (Twisters, Hitman) was going to star in the film. No other cast has been announced, although the film is slated to begin shooting this fall; while it looks like this is going to move forward, Paramount’s ongoing existential drama (the company is in the midst of being sold) could potentially slow The Running Man down for a minute.
‘Salem’s Lot
Here’s the good news: the first big-screen treatment of King’s seminal 1975 novel, about a small Maine town overrun by vampires, has been filmed and does exist. The movie was shot in late 2021 and early 2022 by writer-director Gary Dauberman, who wrote both parts of It and also wrote and directed Annabelle Comes Home. The cast includes Lewis Pullman, Makenzie Leigh, Bill Camp, Pilou Asbæk, John Benjamin Hickey, Alfre Woodard, and William Sadler as characters long beloved by King fans, many of whom (including this writer) consider ‘Salem’s Lot one of his all-time masterpieces.
But here’s the bad news: after first moving from its September 2022 release date to April 2023, the movie was removed altogether from the Warner Bros. theatrical schedule. It was reported in late 2023 that the company was considering debuting the film on the Max streaming service, and in February 2024 King himself took to X to ask why the film was still on the shelf. “I’ve seen the new Salem’s Lot and it’s quite good,” King wrote. “Not sure why WB is holding it back; not like it’s embarrassing, or anything.” Although a fall 2024 debut on Max has been rumored, there is still no exact release date (an October theatrical release in the UK also remains unconfirmed).
‘Salem’s Lot was adapted twice before, in 1979 and 2004, both times as a four-hour miniseries. Neither was totally great nor totally bad, so a definitive version of this classic remains elusive. Let’s hope this is it…and that we get to see it someday.
The Talisman
This dark fantasy novel co-written by King and the late horror giant Peter Straub has been in development for decades. Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment has held the rights for what seems like forever (they literally own the property in perpetuity), with the project occasionally surfacing from a long development hell slumber as Amblin commissions yet another new screenplay.
This EW article recaps some of the proposed versions that have gone by the wayside, including a TNT miniseries and a feature film directed by Mike Barker (The Handmaid’s Tale). New Mutants writer-director Josh Boone was also working on a version at one point. But the most recent news (via THR) — from March 2021, alas – was that Amblin was going to team up with the Duffer brothers of Stranger Things fame to bring The Talisman to life as a series for Netflix, with Spielberg and the Duffers executive producing.
A showrunner was named at the time of that report (Curtis Gwinn, who also worked on Stranger Things), but we’ve heard little about its development since. The Talisman has been long cursed in terms of getting to the screen — and if even the combined power of Spielberg and the Duffers can’t make it happen, perhaps no one can.
The Tommyknockers
King’s 1987 novel about a town possessed by an alien force emanating from a long-buried spacecraft got the ABC miniseries treatment (rather forgettably) in 1993. The book itself — the last one he wrote before he got sober — has generally ended up near the bottom of any serious ranking of King’s many novels, and the author himself dislikes it. But that didn’t stop producer-director James Wan (Aquaman, The Conjuring) and producer Roy Lee (It) from cracking it open again in 2018, when they signed onto the project with the backing of Universal, which won out over Sony and Netflix for the rights.
Since then, however, crickets. Wan tapped Jeremy Slater to script it after Slater previously created and oversaw the writing of Fox’s The Exorcist TV series. It was speculated that Wan might direct as well, but no official announcement on that front has been made in the years since. Perhaps The Tommyknockers, like a number of other hastily-announced King projects, will stay buried after all.
The post Upcoming Stephen King Movies and TV Series: Which Projects Are Still Happening? appeared first on Den of Geek.
