Mike Flanagan’s adaptation of Stephen King’s Revival isn’t moving forward

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

Mike Flanagan has several Stephen King adaptations under his belt with Gerard's Game and Doctor Sleep, and it was announced last year that he was also developing a big-screen adaptation of King's Revival. The novel focuses on the relationship between a "heroin-addicted musician and a dubious faith healer with a hidden agenda. The minister is obsessed with trying to find a way to communicate with his departed wife and child but ends up connecting to a Lovecraftian horror." Unfortunately, Mike Flanagan revealed on Twitter that the project will no longer be moving forward.

Flanagan had offered an update on the project last July, saying that Revival would be a bleak and cynical outing of the highest caliber. "What I love about it is it’s a return to cosmic horror, which I think is so fun," Flanagan said. "It is relentlessly dark and cynical and I’m enjoying the hell out of that. This is just bleak and mean and I like it for that. I haven’t gotten to end a movie that way since Absentia, maybe? Maybe Ouija? This one was a really fun piece of material for me because I get to be like, ‘Oh, you want a dark ending? Okay. Cool. Get ready.'" Given how dark the script was, Flanagan added, "I will be very curious to see if they let me make it." As for Midnight Mass, the upcoming Netflix series takes place on an isolated island community that experiences miraculous events – and frightening omens – after the arrival of a charismatic, mysterious young priest.

A synopsis of Revival via Amazon:

The new minister came to Harlow, Maine, when Jamie Morton was a boy doing battle with his toy army men on the front lawn. The young Reverend Charles Jacobs and his beautiful wife brought new life to the local church and captivated their congregation. But with Jamie, he shares a secret obsession—a draw so powerful, it would have profound consequences five decades after the shattering tragedy that turned the preacher against God, and long after his final, scathing sermon. Now Jamie, a nomadic rock guitarist hooked on heroin, meets Charles Jacobs again. And when their bond becomes a pact beyond even the Devil’s devising, Jamie discovers that the word revival has many meanings…

In addition to Midnight Mass, Flanagan is also developing Christopher Pike's The Midnight Club, which takes place at Rotterdam Home, a hospice for terminally ill teenagers and follows a group of patients who begin to gather together at midnight to share scary stories. They then make a pact that whichever one of them dies first will attempt to contact the others from beyond the grave.