Even More Stephen King
It’s a good time to review your inventory of Stephen King’s backlist. Yet another adaptation of one of his novels is on the way.
Deadline Hollywood reports that Oscar winner Akiva Goldsman (A Beautiful Mind) is adapting Firestarter (S&S/Pocket). This will be the second adaptation, following the 1984 version starring Drew Barrymore as a young girl who “develops pyrokinetic abilities and is abducted by a secret government agency that wants to harness her powerful gift as a weapon.”
In “Rereading Stephen King,” The Guardian acknowledged that the novel is often listed among King’s Top Ten works, “It’s early King, when (collective wisdom has it) he was still writing exciting, original novels, playing in the ballparks of horror-SF that his diehard early readers love.” However, objects their reader, it is “a very thin narrative, stretched over a pretty big book” and call it “easily … the least effective of King’s early works.”
Tor.com did a re-read as well, opening with the comment that it is “the most science fictional of King’s suspense novels, spawned a flop movie and its reputation has become tarnished with time,” concluding “Far from being one of his ‘meh’ books, approaching Firestarter with an open mind reveals it to be one of King’s most fascinating.”
This is now the 7th King adaptation in the works.
It is coming in September. When the trailer was released Deadline wrote that it “set a 24-hour global record with close to 200 million views.”
The long delayed Dark Tower is due out this summer. io9 wrote about the first footage shown at CinemaCon back in March, saying “It looked like a huge amalgamation of all of Stephen King’s books with plenty of original story worked in. This is not a straight adaptation. No, it’s a new take on this story. Almost an alternate dimension.” Look for a trailer arriving this week. Trailer Track predicts it will be shown ahead of this week’s screenings of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2.
Adding to the list, The Mist is coming on June 22nd. The TV series based on Mr. Mercedes is currently filming. In post-production, but with no release dates yet, are 1922, based on a short story, and Gerald’s Game, based on King’s 1992 novel.