The year Stephen King turned 70 has been a good one for the popular horror author. With all the adaptations heading to both television and the big screen, King’s Constant Readers have been a mixture of thrilled and disappointed, depending on the adaptation in question. Hulu’s “Castle Rock,” heading to the smaller screen in 2018, looks to be an interesting and indirect adaptation of a series of stories and characters, and a new Teaser Trailer, showing more of the characters, has been released.
Adaptations of Stephen King’s work continue
Probably the best King adaptation of 2017 so far is the clown horror “It,” which has gone on to break box office records for horror movies, while “Gerald’s Game” is also thrilling audiences on Netflix. The show is a clever adaptation of a romantic weekend which turned horribly wrong. Although it was highly anticipated, the film version of “The Dark Tower” was a damp squib, and definitely not representative of King’s magnum opus series of books.
On TV, “The Mist” was quite literally lost in the mist and ended up being canceled, while the adaptation of King's “Mr.
Mercedes” is continuing to thrill audiences with its slow buildup to all the horror and excitement of the terrifying killer of the same nickname. King fans have the adaptation of the novella “1922” to look forward to this year and also the series “Castle Rock” coming in 2018.
While not a direct adaptation of King’s work, J.J. Abrams described “Castle Rock” as being a series of stories relating to the made-up town of the same name. That town has been featured in many of King’s novels and stories. Along the way, many famous characters from those stories will appear in one form or another, as well as hints of the stories themselves, as producers draw on what they term the “Stephen King multiverse.”
Anyone who has read “The Dead Zone” will recall the Maine town of Castle Rock, the name of which was inspired by the mountain fort in the 1954 novel “Lord of the Flies” by William Golding.
The town also starred in “The Dark Half,” “Cujo” and several others along with references made to the town in more stories and books, including “Gerald’s Game.”
Great cast in the upcoming ‘Castle Rock’
As noted by Entertainment Weekly, “Castle Rock” is a star-studded production, with many well-known actors and actresses doing their part, including Sissy Spacek (“Carrie”), Bill Skarsgård (of recent “It” fame), André Holland, Terry O’Quinn (“Lost,” “Millennium”), Scott Glenn, Jane Levy, and Melanie Lynskey.
Coming from Warner Bros. Television and Bad Robot Productions, the show’s producers are Sam Shaw, Dustin Thomason, J.J. Abrams, Liz Glotzer, and Ben Stephenson.
While the show premieres next year and there are mysteries about what to expect, the trailer below certainly teases a real treat for all King fans and others who enjoy horror. Before the series premiere on Hulu, enjoy the latest teaser trailer below and see how many references to particular King novels and stories you can spot.