SALEM’S LOT gets a September 2022 release date.

Though not a trailer yet, weirdly: “Warner Bros. has announced that its upcoming feature film adaptation of Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot will be released on September 9, 2022.” I first heard about this flick back in 2019; there hasn’t been much news since, though. I kind of forgot about it, unsurprisingly.

Will it be any good? I hope so: the original book is a solid vampire novel, from King’s pre-reeducation days*. There’s enough there to build a decent movie around it. Hope it doesn’t suck!

#commissionearned

*I do not refer to his opinions on the Things We Don’t Talk About Here. I refer to his current apparent desire to be loved by the very literature professors who loathed him as much as he loathed them. Frankly, his books were better when he despised those people.

Book of the Week: DANSE MACABRE.

I know that Stephen King is somewhat of a jackass, these days; but his 1981 work DANSE MACABRE is an extremely useful look at the contemporary horror genre, and we are overdue for somebody to write something similar for our own time period*. It’s the old problem of separating the art from the artist. I mean, even I can be a slight jackass, sometimes.

No, really.

Moe Lane

*No, not me. I do not come even close to having The Knowledge necessary for such an endeavor. Ken Hite? This is your moment.

Joe Hill wants to take a shot at MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE.

Somebody asked Joe Hill if he wanted to direct, and this is what he said: “I would only want to jump into directing if I had a chance to do the reboot of Maximum Overdrive. If someone offered me the chance to write and direct a relaunch of Maximum Overdrive, I’d jump at that in a second.”

Continue reading Joe Hill wants to take a shot at MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE.

Just in time for Halloween: a reprint of Stephen King’s CYCLE OF THE WEREWOLF.

Yeah, yeah, I know. But I first read this back in college, about thirty years ago: and CYCLE OF THE WEREWOLF was good! It’s basically a mix of a novelette and a bunch of illustrations, but I enjoyed it — and I plan to toss it into the hands of my eldest, who will probably love it. As for the price: heh, you should have seen how much it was going for before the reprint.

Starting to look forward to Halloween. We have plans, my wife and I. Plans to get the trick-or-treating to work. There are diagrams.

“‘Salem’s Lot” coming to the big screen.

‘Salem’s Lot has gone to the small screen twice, as a miniseries: I remember the first one. Well, actually, I remember that it sucked. Although I may be remembering a different miniseries that sucked, since it was done in 1979 and I was busy being nine at the time. Anyway, they’re making an actual movie.

Stephen King’s vampire novel Salem’s Lot is heading to the big screen.

James Wan and Gary Dauberman, the respective producer and writer collaborators behind many of the biggest hits of theConjuring horror universe, are teaming to adapt the novel for New Line.  

Dauberman will write the script and serve as executive producer. Wan will produce, along with Roy Lee and Mark Wolper.

Continue reading “‘Salem’s Lot” coming to the big screen.

Adaptation of Stephen King’s ‘The Tommyknockers’ planned.

Well. The bad news is, The Tommyknockers isn’t actually a very good book. I read it, and in retrospect it was fairly lurid in places, clearly written when Stephen King was in a personally dark place, and reveals the first signs of an inherent contempt for the pulp literature tradition (in this case, classic pulp science fiction) that Stephen King first sprang from, spent years being defecated on by the literary critics accordingly, and has since spent more years trying to successfully escape. His privilege, of course, and since Stephen King still gets readily published I’m sure that he doesn’t care about my opinion anyway.  Assuming he would end up even ever reading it*. Continue reading Adaptation of Stephen King’s ‘The Tommyknockers’ planned.

Book of the Week: Cycle of the Werewolf.

Man, I hope that I still have Stephen King’s Cycle of the Werewolf — it’s just what it says on the tin, folks; a year-long set of stories about a werewolf in a small town — floating* around in the library downstairs. I remember it being a fun read and now I want to read it.  Ach, well, I suppose that the library has a copy.

And so, adieu to Mindstar Rising. Continue reading Book of the Week: Cycle of the Werewolf.

Some clips from the upcoming “IT” movie.

I rather badly want this movie to not suck. I mean, I REALLY want this movie not to suck. IT is maybe the best Stephen King book I’ve ever read.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10gfbsXSf2k

But it could suck.  And that’s what worries me.  The casting looks good, but the entire first movie is literally about children being menaced and threatened, which is pretty raw stuff for modern audiences (even if they take out That Scene From The Book).  But if the movie hesitates on putting those kids through the wringer, it’s going to suck.  Horribly.

Please God, don’t let it suck.

So, they’re remaking Stephen King’s Firestarter.

Which leads to an interesting question: Is Hollywood’s intellectually bankrupt habit of recycling old films as bad when the original movie sucked?  Because I remember the original Firestarter.  It wasn’t very good.  A lot of early adaptions of Stephen King books weren’t very good.  So I’m kind of curious to see whether this is a problem with the movies, or Stephen King’s earlier works*.

Moe Lane

*This is not a criticism of Stephen King’s earlier works.  For example, I liked the Firestarter book for what it was, which was a page-turning science fiction / horror novel that wasn’t too full of itself.  But not all books make for good movies. God knows the first Firestarter flick wasn’t.