Paul Greengrass to direct adaptation of Stephen King’s Fairy Tale

Stephen King’s latest novel was published just last week, and there’s already a feature-film adaptation in the works. Deadline has reported that Paul Greengrass will write, direct, and produce an adaptation of Stephen King’s Fairy Tale.

Fairy Tale tells the story of a seventeen-year-old boy who inherits the keys to a parallel world where good and evil are at war, and the stakes could not be higher — for that world or ours. In a statement, Stephen King said, “Needless to say, I’m a Paul Greengrass fan and think he’s a wonderful choice for this film.” Paul Greengrass added, “Fairy Tale is a work of genius. A classic adventure story and also a disturbing contemporary allegory.” Deadline says that the project will be shopped around very soon and that plenty of studios and streaming services will likely jump at the chance to snap it up. Here’s the official synopsis of Fairy Tale for a little more information:

Charlie Reade looks like a regular high school kid, great at baseball and football, a decent student. But he carries a heavy load. His mom was killed in a hit-and-run accident when he was ten, and grief drove his dad to drink. Charlie learned how to take care of himself—and his dad. When Charlie is seventeen, he meets a dog named Radar and her aging master, Howard Bowditch, a recluse in a big house at the top of a big hill, with a locked shed in the backyard. Sometimes strange sounds emerge from it.

Charlie starts doing jobs for Mr. Bowditch and loses his heart to Radar. Then, when Bowditch dies, he leaves Charlie a cassette tape telling a story no one would believe. What Bowditch knows, and has kept secret all his long life, is that inside the shed is a portal to another world.

Early on during the pandemic, Stephen King wanted to write something that would make him happy. “As if my imagination had been waiting for the question to be asked, I saw a vast deserted city—deserted but alive,” King explained. “I saw the empty streets, the haunted buildings, a gargoyle head lying overturned in the street. I saw smashed statues (of what I didn’t know, but I eventually found out). I saw a huge, sprawling palace with glass towers so high their tips pierced the clouds. Those images released the story I wanted to tell.”

Paul Greengrass most recently helmed News of the World, a western starring Tom Hanks. As for Stephen King, the next adaptation of his work is less than a month away. Mr. Harrigan’s Phone stars Jaeden Martell and Donald Sutherland and will debut on Netflix on October 5th. The film focuses on a young boy who befriends an older, reclusive billionaire. The two form a bond over books and an iPhone, but when the man passes away, the boy discovers that not everything dead is gone as he’s able to communicate with his friend from the grave through the iPhone that was buried with him.