Today we've learned that Mike Barker will be directing the big-screen adaptation of Stephen King and Peter Straub‘s 1984 novel THE TALISMAN for Steven Spielberg‘s Amblin Partners and The Kennedy/Marshall Company. Barker is a well-known TV director whose credits include OUTLANDER, FARGO, and BROADCHURCH along with Hulu’s THE HANDMAID'S TALE. He has also helmed that Ethan Hawke and William Hurt MOBY DICK movie, along with BEST LAID PLANS with Reese Witherspoon and Josh Brolin, and SHATTERED with Pierce Brosnan and Gerard Butler.
As you may remember, at one point THE NEW MUTANTS director Josh Boone had been brought in to pen the adaptation's screenplay and he even shared some storyboards. But Boone seems to be out now as Collider reports that Chris Sparling (BURIED) will pen the adaptation which follows:
Twelve-year-old Jack Sawyer, whose mother frantically moves the two of them from Rodeo Drive to a New York City apartment to the Alhambra, a fading ocean resort and shuttered amusement park in New Hampshire. Who or what is she running from? She is dying . . . and even young Jack knows she can’t outrun death. But only he can save her—for he has been chosen to search for a prize across an epic landscape of dangers and lies, a realm of innocents and monsters, where everything Jack loves is on the line.
Frank Marshall will produce on behalf of Kennedy/Marshall, while former Amblin CEO Michael Wright will serve as an executive producer.
On a related note, King and Straub have been talking up plans for a new novel in The Talisman universe for years now. The last word we heard on the third entry being back in 2014 when King confirmed that it was supposed to be a trilogy and that he had already worked out the framework for the third book in his head. He also said he hoped to write it with Peter Straub during next year… but again, that was back in 2014. Will there ever be a third TALISMAN book? I guess we'll see one of these days. If you haven't read THE TALISMAN yet, you can snag a copy over on Amazon right HERE.