Deadline just broke the news that Blumhouse Television has picked up the rights to turn the 2021 Stephen King novel Later (you can purchase a copy HERE) into a limited series. Lucy Liu is already attached to star in the series, and the pilot episode has been written by Raelle Tucker.
Published by Hard Case Crime, Later tells the story of
Tia, a literary agency owner who is raising her son Jamie alone and finds herself on the brink of professional ruin when her star author client dies before turning out the work that will make her agency financially whole. Jamie has the supernatural ability to talk to the dead, all of whom tell him the truth. This is very helpful when he talks to the dead author and feeds the contents of the book to his mother, who writes it herself and publishes it under the author’s name, to great success. But this gift can be used for more nefarious purposes. Tia’s police detective girlfriend figures out what the boy can do, and soon the youth gets over his head in the spirit world.
King had this to say about the news:
I’ve wanted to work with Jason Blum for years, and now we have two projects together. Go, me!”
Deadline suggests that the other Blumhouse project King is talking about is the Netflix adaptation Mr. Harrigan’s Phone, which just wrapped production… but the quote does give the impression that there have been so many adaptations of King’s work that he has lost track of them. Not only was Blumhouse behind the 2014 film Mercy, which was based on the King story Gramma, but they also recently wrapped production on a new version of Firestarter and are developing a new take on Christine with Bryan Fuller. An adaptation of King’s story The Breathing Method was set up at Blumhouse, with Scott Derrickson attached to direct, back in 2012. So there are more than two Blumhouse / King projects out there. Maybe King just happens to be more closely involved with two of the projects than he is with the others, or I’m just overthinking a joke line.
Blumhouse founder Jason Blum made his own comedic comment:
I’ve wanted to work with Stephen King since before I was born, which sounds impossible until you remember that it’s Stephen King.”
Tucker, who was a producer on True Blood, a story editor on Supernatural, and worked with Blumhouse on Sacred Lies, had this to say:
Later is terrifying and touching and wonderfully weird — of course it is, it’s Stephen King. Adapting one of my favorite writers of all time, with an incredible partner like Blumhouse and the incomparable Lucy Liu, is a dream come true.”
Blum will be executive producing Later with Chris McCumber and Jeremy Gold.