Stephen King’s The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon to get a screen adaptation

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

It's Thursday, so that must mean that it's time to announce that yet another work by Stephen King is being adapted for the screen.

It's been revealed that Village Roadshow Pictures has scooped up King's psychological horror novel, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, which is set to be adapted by Christy Hall, the co-creator and executive producer of Netflix's coming-of-age series I AM NOT OKAY WITH THIS.

In The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, “King offers a frightening suspense novel about a young girl who becomes lost in the woods as night falls.” 

“On a six-mile hike on the Maine-New Hampshire branch of the Appalachian Trail, nine-year-old Trisha McFarland quickly tires of the constant bickering between her older brother, Pete, and her recently divorced mother. But when she wanders off by herself, and then tries to catch up by attempting a shortcut, she becomes lost in a wilderness maze full of peril and terror.”

“As night falls, Trisha has only her ingenuity as a defense against the elements, and only her courage and faith to withstand her mounting fears. For solace she tunes her Walkman to broadcasts of Boston Red Sox baseball games and follows the gritty performances of her hero, relief pitcher Tom Gordon. And when her radio’s reception begins to fade, Trisha imagines that Tom Gordon is with her—protecting her from an all-too-real enemy who has left a trail of slaughtered animals and mangled trees in the dense, dark woods…”

Producing the adaptation are Jon Berg of Stampede Ventures with IT: CHAPTER TWO and DOCTOR SLEEP producer Roy Lee of Vertigo, Christine Romero, and Ryan Silbert of Origin Story. Meanwhile, Andrew Childs will executive produce with Village Roadshow’s EVP of Content, Jillian Apfelbaum,, who will oversee the development of the project.

You know, I joke about there being too many Stephen King projects in the works, but can you ever really have too much of a good thing? Hell, I'm still waiting with bated breath to hear more about David E. Kelley's limited series adaptation of King's The Institute. If you've yet to read it, The Institute tells the story of Luke Ellis, a boy with telekinesis, who is forced to enter the Institute, a shady facility in the middle of nowhere that performs all manner of horrific tests on kids with supernatural abilities. The story is more or less King's version of the X-Men, with plenty of torture and the killing of innocents thrown in for good measure. Kelley is set to adapt the novel with Jack Bender of LOST fame. I say bring it on, as well as The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon adaptation.