EXCLUSIVE: After scoring the big deal at the Toronto Film Festival with Neon for TIFF’s People’s Choice Award winner The Life of Chuck, director Mike Flanagan and Stephen King are right back at it. The Dish hears their next collaboration will be Carrie, this time in an eight-episode series for Amazon. Flanagan will be the showrunner…
… This would be the second recent deal in which one of King’s treasures would be given a longer storytelling road. A24 has Paul Greegrass and JH Wyman adapting King’s Fairy Tale into a series, after an earlier attempt to mount it as a movie at Universal made them realize there was just too much story to pack into one feature. The Gary Dauberman-directed Salem’s Lot was just released for Halloween…
… They’re opening a writers room, so this one’s happening quickly.
What book have you ever read that actually fits into a 1-2 hour movie? They have to cut those stories to the bone to get them on screen. The movie format is the worst for books, only seconded by the 24-episode, 10 season slog heralded by Fox TV shows.
The miniseries is the ideal format, especially for a book adaptation. Sharp Objects is my favourite example. No hack screenwriters creating “composite characters” to reduce the number of actors, no TV writers drawing on material they didn’t write and don’t understand to try and expand on it to fill extra episodes.
Just an 8 episode, straight adaptation from book to screen. It’s perfect.
You think the Carrie story warrants 8 hours?
I think if there is anyone I would trust to make that determination, it’s Mike Flanagan.