Stephen King teaming with Jon Demme? Not sure about you, but I like that a whole lot better than the failed King-Ron Howard marriage!
Anyway, Showblitz is reporting that the great Jonathan Demme (THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, PHILADELHIA) has bought the rights to Stephen King’s upcoming novel, 11/22/63, with plans to write, produce and direct the adaptation to the big-screen himself. Pretty damn sweet, no?
Word is the book follows Jake Epping, a 35-year-old high school English teacher from Maine who travels back in time to try and prevent President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.
Nice! So it’ll be a sci-fi period piece. A little different territory for King, and Demme for that matter, but with as much talent as those dudes have between them, it’s hard to conceive of them making a substandard movie.
As you know, King’s THE DARK TOWER is looking for suitors after Universal passed. A&E is adapting his “Bag Of Bones” to the small-screen. Meanwhile, remakes of CARRIE and PET SEMATARY (and who remembers how many else) continue to persist. A bit of understatement, but King is never out of work…literarily or cinematically.
For Demme, 11/22/63 will mark his first narrative feature since RACHEL GETTING MARRIED in 2008. He’s since done TV and doc work, notably NEIL YOUNG TRUNK SHOW and I’M CAROLYN PARKER. I for one couldn’t not be more thrilled his next feature will be a Stephen King adaptation.
What says you?
Pre-order 11/22/63 HERE.
RACHEL GETTING MARRIED star Anne Hathaway