Another day and another Stephen King adaptation is just over the horizon. One of the many Stephen King projects out there is HBO's adaptation of "The Outsider," a new TV series which will find Ben Mendelsohn (THE KING) starring as Ralph Anderson, a detective setting out to investigate the murder of an 11-year-old boy. The evidence all seems to point to Terry Maitland (Jason Bateman), who is arrested for the murder while coaching a little league game, but Maitland denies the charge and has one very important piece of evidence backing him up: surveillance footage showing that he was 60 miles away when the boy was killed. If he did kill the boy, it would mean that he had to have been in two places at once. Spooky.
In addition to Ben Mendelsohn and Jason Bateman, The Outsider also stars Cynthia Erivo, Bill Camp, Mare Winningham, Paddy Considine, Julianne Nicholson, Yul Vázquez, Jeremy Bobb and Marc Menchaca. I know next to nothing of the novel on which this series is based, but the trailer certainly does its job in painting something beautiful and terrifying.
The official synopsis for The Outsider:
The 10-episode series follows police detective Ralph Anderson (Ben Mendelsohn), as he sets out to investigate the mutilated body of 11-year-old Frankie Peterson found in the Georgia woods. The mysterious circumstances surrounding this horrifying crime leads Ralph, still grieving the recent death of his own son, to bring in unorthodox private investigator Holly Gibney (Cynthia Erivo), whose uncanny abilities he hopes will help explain the unexplainable.
The Outsider will premiere on HBO on January 12, 2020.