Salem’s Lot: Makenzie Leigh, Spencer Treat Clark, Bill Camp join cast

Just a few days ago, it was announced that Lewis Pullman (The Strangers: Prey at Night, Top Gun: Maverick) has been cast as Ben Mears in writer/director Gary Dauberman’s adaptation of the Stephen King novel Salem’s Lot (pick up a copy at THIS LINK). Now Makenzie Leigh (Gotham, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk), Spencer Treat Clark (The Last House on the Left 2009, The Town That Dreaded Sundown 2014), and Bill Camp (Joker, 12 Years a Slave) have signed on.

Salem’s Lot tells the story of

author Ben Mears, who returns to his childhood home of Jerusalem’s Lot in search of inspiration for his next book only to discover his hometown is being preyed upon by a bloodthirsty vampire.

Leigh will be playing Susan Norton, “a resident of Jerusalem’s Lot, Maine. Ben and her eventually fall in love, and she has a knowledge of the vampires in town.”

Clark’s character is Mike Ryerson, “one of the town’s simple folk, who becomes a victim to the events at hand.”

Camp takes on the role of Matthew Burke, “a former high school English teacher who knows about the Marsten House’s evil past and helps out Ben.”

This new take on Salem’s Lot is coming to us from New Line Cinema. Dauberman previously co-wrote the Stephen King adaptations It and It: Chapter Two for the company. King’s second published novel, Salem’s Lot previously served as the basis of a 1979 mini-series and a 2004 mini-series.

I look forward to seeing how this movie is going to present the vampire Kurt Barlow. While he looked like a regular person in the novel (and was played by Rutger Hauer that way in the ’04 mini-series), the ’79 mini-series made him a Nosferatu-like creature – and therefore much more memorable. Will Dauberman stick to the book’s depiction of Barlow, or pay tribute to the ’79 version?