James Wan (THE CONJURING, INSIDIOUS) and Gary Dauberman (ANNABELLE: CREATION, ANNABELLE COMES HOME) are teaming to adapt Stephen King's vampire novel SALEM'S LOT for New Line and the big screen. Dauberman will pen the script and executive produce while Wan will produce with Roy Lee and Mark Wolper. And today Dauberman says he aims to be as true to King's original novel as possible.
Dauberman says:
I like to be as true to the story as I possibly can until it gets a little too unwieldy for a movie. I’m very, very excited to be a part of that and tackle it. It hasn’t had the big screen treatment yet, which is how I felt about It. It’s so fun to play around with vampires and make something truly scary with vampires. I haven’t seen that in a long, long time, and I’m excited for people to see it.
Nice! As much as I like Tobe Hooper's version, it was quite a bit different from King's source material. Especially when it came to the character of Kurt Barlow. Good to see Wan and crew will be keeping closer to the book this time around!
The book was originally published in 1975, and King’s book centers on an author who
returns to his hometown in order to write about an abandoned mansion in the small town. As he discovers the home has been bought by a mysterious man from Europe, the man also realizes that townspeople are slowly being turned into vampires. The writer bands together with a ragtag group to stop the spread of vampires, with the final confrontation happening in the house with the mysterious man.
This will be SALEM'S LOT's first time on the big screen. It was already adapted twice for TV with director Tobe Hooper's 1979 miniseries adapted for the screen by Paul Monash. That version starred David Soul, James Mason, Lance Kerwin, Bonnie Bedelia, and Lew Ayres. Rob Lowe starred in a more recent TNT adaptation in 2004 directed by Mikael Salomon from a screenplay written by Peter Filardi and co-starring Andre Braugher, Donald Sutherland, Samantha Mathis, Rutger Hauer, James Cromwell, Robert Mammone, and Dan Byrd.
How excited are you about Wan and Dauberman's big screen version of King's (debatably) scariest novel? Hit us up and let us know below!