Despite box office earnings for this summers movie's being the poorest in decades one movie did manage to reign supreme above all others - Andy Muschietti's new adaptation of Stephen King's best selling novel IT. Starring Bill Skarsgard as the titular antagonist the movie proved a hit with critics and audiences. Surprisingly the movie was also a hit with fans of the novel and the 1990 TV mini-series in which legendary British actor Tim Curry took on the role of Pennywise the clown. Muschietti will return to direct the second part of IT with the adult cast of the losers club due for release September 6th, 2019, while also being attached to adapt Robotech and another Stephen King adaptation called The Jaunt for the big screen, the latter of which science fiction horror fans should definitely check out.
Sadly not everything with Stephen King's name attached to it proved as successful this summer. Although Mr. Mercedes seems to have been a moderate success on the Audience Network, Spike TV's ten episode season of The Mist and the big screen adaptation of The Dark Tower faired much less favorably, due in no small part to their well-publicized deviations from the source material. The question remains however into which pile the new series Castle Rock, produced by J. J. Abrams will find itself.
The show seems to feature two distinct timelines with what looks like a younger version of Andre Holland's character of Henry Deaver. Eagle-eyed fans will also have noticed Bill Skarsgard and Sissy Spacek as well as a plethora of easter eggs, such as a missing child poster (IT) and a patrol car from The Shawshank prison (Shawshank Redemption).
Castle Rock holds a lot of potential for both long-term and new fans to works of King and could help create a new shared universe, that could in theory span forty years of big-screen and small-screen adaptations. Or it could just be another overly referential collection of stories that were 'better in the book'. We'll have to wait until the series premieres on Hulu sometime in 2018 to find out. Until the series gets a confirmed release date, however, you'll just have to make do with the officially released synopsis for the show...
"A psychological-horror series set in the Stephen King multiverse, Castle Rock combines the mythological scale and intimate character storytelling of King’s best-loved works, weaving an epic saga of darkness and light, played out on a few square miles of Maine woodland. The series stars André Holland, Melanie Lynskey, Sissy Spacek, Bill Skarsgård, Jane Levy and Scott Glenn."
