Director Rob Savage’s adaptation of the Stephen King short story The Boogeyman (read our review HERE) just had a solid opening weekend of $20 million, and there could be more King adaptations in Savage’s future. If so, he has already picked out the story he wants to bring to the screen next. It’s a story that already received a mini-series adaptation back in 1995, but that one didn’t go over well. It’s the novella The Langoliers, which was featured in King’s story collection Four Past Midnight.
Written and directed by Tom Holland (the one who made Child’s Play and Fright Night), the mini-series adaptation of The Langoliers told the following story: On a red-eye flight to Boston from Los Angeles, 10 people wake up to a shock. All of the other passengers and crew have vanished. When they try to contact the ground they make no connections. They land the plane only to discover that things haven’t changed, but it’s like the world is dead. Nobody’s there, the air is still, sound doesn’t echo, the food is tasteless, and a distant sound comes closer and closer. A race of monstrous beings bent on their destruction is heading for them, eating everything in sight.
Patricia Wettig, Dean Stockwell, David Morse, Mark Lindsay Chapman, Frankie Faison, Baxter Harris, Kimber Riddle, Christopher Collet, Kate Maberly, Bronson Pinchot, and John Griesemer star.
Savage shared his Langoliers dream on the Kingcast podcast, telling the hosts (with thanks to Game Rant for the transcription), “I mean, the rights are all tied up. It’s one of the ones I mentioned to King that I really wanted to do. After he saw The Boogeyman, he emailed me saying, ‘We should work together again on something!’ and immediately I was like, ‘I really want to adapt The Langoliers‘ and he was really enthusiastic about that. But I think the rights are all tied up, so we’re trying to untie them. I can’t say too much and it’s certainly not a real thing yet, but I always loved that short story. … It’s so great and so creepy and it’s such a brilliant, simple ‘Why didn’t I think of that?!’ set-up with the plane. It’s so spooky. I think there’s a definitively terrifying version of that [to be made]. As much as I enjoy the TV movie, that’s not it.“
Would you like to see Rob Savage take on a new adaptation of The Langoliers? Let us know by leaving a comment below – and if you have seen his version of The Boogeyman, tell us what you thought of it!