SK's Mist News!

i don't know if they'll be able to top the 3-D "Sensurround" (chuckle) audio-drama. I remember listening to it on a family road trip to Colorado.

"OH MY GOD, IT'S TEARING CHUNKS OF MEAT OUT OF HIM!"

I'll believe it when I see it.

Because if there's anyone who has a flawless track record with King adaptations, it's Tom Jane.

This is probably the last, actually the only, King adaptation that I want to see brought to the screen. I just hope to God that it's done right and the people doing it actually understand how special this property can be. It may be the most cinematic worthy thing he's written.

I still think "The Talisman" would make an amazing movie.

You know, I got way too much "fast and furious" out of that article.

I dunno, the geek in me would love to The Dark Tower novels brought to screen by Peter Jackson or someone like that.

I reckon if you trim the fat and keep it nasty as all hell, Insomnia could make one hell of a trip.

As am I. I really liked this story and always thought it'd make a good film. But I gotta say. . . I kinda LIKED "Dreamcatcher."

And I think "From a Buick 8" would be cool to see onscreen. Or maybe a GOOD version of "The Stand." I still get angry every time I think of how they butchered my favorite book of all time w/ that lousy TV miniseries. When did I know it was gonna suck? As soon as I heard 2 words: Molly-Fucking-Ringwald.

Interesting observation. I haven't listened to the audio drama in a long time, but I remember there being a lot of product mentions (I distinctly remember something about caramel nut corn clusters, or something along those lines). Since it takes place in a grocery store, I'll give it a pass.

As a sidebar, has anyone here read The Cell? It's the first King novel I've attempted to read since Dark Tower VII, and I'm astonished that they're written by the same person. In the first 80 pages, he uses the phrase "As if to underline his point, ..." at least five or six times. Do his novels completely bypass the editing process at this point?

Unfortunately, I think they do. I was MASSIVELY disappointed w/ "Cell". It started out so strong, and faltered pretty early on. I mean. . . levitation? WTF was THAT all about?

But Dino DeLaurentiis or some such greedy Hollywood mogul will probably seize on this and make a terrible movie out of it anyway. Shades of "The Lawnmower Man" all over again. . .

I'm pretty sure that it's already been seized, and has been since its viral spread across the bookshelves of America. In fact, the last thing that I heard was that Eli Roth was attached to adapt and direct. Hell, it'll be worth a rental if only to see everything go kablooey in the first 30 minutes or so. After that, meh.

CELL's got a hyoooge mountain to climb if its gonna be anything other than silly Stephen King flotsam. Even the opening, which is lots of fun to read, has Zach Snyder's DotD '04 set-up to contend with. That captured the panic and chaos of a modern zombie outbreak shockingly well, and it did so two years before CELL was even released.

Agreed, but... "Cell" opens in a major metropolitan center, Boston, and I think, in that aspect, it has the opportunity to be huger (at least, in its sense of apocolypse) than the suburban confines of the "Dawn" opening. That being said, I certainly am not expecting much. I am, however, a sucker for movies and novels that sort of throw you right into the action and, as has been mentioned, "Cell" does just that. It's only too bad that King couldn't sustain that for more than a hundred pages

I agree wholeheartedly w/ both the above posts. The thing that will HAVE to seperate the opening of a film version of cell from 04's DotD would be the grandness of scale a full fledged mass psychotic episode ina city would produce. But hey, as a consolation, Al's article on the Mist project cheers me considerably. A release date and all! How cool is that? I can't wait!

An adaptation of Cell would have to go a long way to distinguish itself from 28 days later more so than from DOTD, especially if you discount the phone gimmick. God, as much as I hate Cell (and I hate it SO MUCH), I'd like to see it creatively adapted by someone with no respect for the source. All of the best King adaptations come from an outsider who turns King's ideas into something much better than they originally were.

[QUOTE=Minsky] All of the best King adaptations come from an outsider who turns King's ideas into something much better than they originally were.[QUOTE]

I have to disagree w/ you there. I don't think King's ideas have been all that bad (well. . . not until he wrote "Cell", anyway), or that they've been the problem w/ the adaptations. Agreed, Kubrick did a better job w/ "The Shining" than any other direcor of one of his horror adaptations, and he did stray quite a bit from King's original ideas, but holding true to the ideas can produce a good film as well. Except for the annoying child actress playing the daughter & Lt. Yar, "Pet Sematary" was really good. So was "The Dead Zone". Christopher Walken wasn't quite what I envisioned when I thought of Johnny Smith, but I just dig him so much he made that a great film. "Cujo" was a faithful adaptation. Maybe not a great film, but it wasn't being taken from a great book, either. And the child actor playing Tad wasn't bad; he really conveyed hysteria convincingly when they were locked in the car. I think it's more in the execution than in the source material where King adaptations fall short, for the reasons Darkmite8 states above. Not that having King on board helps much; witness, "Maximum Overdrive" and (although not an adaptation) "Sleepwalkers" (stabbed a guy w/ an EAR OF CORN, FOR GOD'S SAKE!). I think he's better off just letting someone else (who's hopefully very talented) take the reins.

It seems like all of the film adaptations he's been directly involved with have been disasters. Compare the original Shining to the remake starring the guy from Wings. Or the crappy hospital show. Or "Storm of the Century." Check out his filmography as a producer- all of them are awful.

All of his best adaptations are a result of the synergy between his ideas and others' interpretations, and, as far as I can tell, the further away he stays from them the better they turn out.

You're right, Minsky. It's a bit bizarre actually but no matter how good a writer King is, and he's done some phenomenal work in his career - he seems to have almost zero idea of what makes a film good.

Anway, my personal feelling is that the best King interpretations still to come are gonna be from some of his short stories. I love the guy, but his novels very often lose the plot somewhere along the way. On the other hand, he does have an incredible backlog of short stories to be mined. Don't forget that even Shawshank was (in some form) a short story...Nightmares and Dreamscapes on its own has at least 5 stories that, in the right hands, could be turned into killer features.

I think THE MIST is going to wind up being in serious contention for being one of THE very best all out horror flicks based on King's work since they all began 30 years ago with CARRIE.
Let's face it, Darabont probably has the best track record when it comes to adapting King & this is a long time labor of love for him. I just can't see him screwing it up. I, for one, am more excited about this one than I've been about any other King based film in a long, LONG time.
Like a whole lot of other folks, I've been anxious to see THE MIST up on the big screen since first reading the short novel in the DARK FORCES hardcover back in '81 or '82.
If I'm not mistaken, the front runner to handle the originally planned film was George Romero from a King written script, but somehow it never got the green light for production. Which, in retrospect, is probably a good thing because though I enjoy much of Romero's work, I'm NOT a big fan of either of King adaptions. Especially THE DARK HALF.
And, as was pointed out here in some earlier posts, many of ol' Steve's scripts have been less than scintilating once onscreen.
In this case, I feel MUCH more optimistic with Darabont handling those chores.

With regard to Thomas Jane in the lead, I think he'll be just about perfect.
He has an obvious affinity for genre material & that shows up in his performances onscreen. If there's one thing that I absolutely LOATH, it's when an actor clearly feels that they're "above" the material & it's obvious in their work. With Jane, we'll see none of that nonsense.

As for DREAMCATCHER, hey, that's a big guilty pleasure of mine, so back off! LOL
Seriously though, that film is an anomoly of some kind. Because IMO the first half of it is pretty damned good, but then it just completely falls apart toward the end.

So, Oliver Platt NEEDS to be cast as Ollie Weeks.

Just throwing it out there.

KNB's on board!

Are you implying Rob Bottin, Rick Baker, & Stan Winston are in some way HAS-BEENS?? We could be getting Alec Gillis and Tom Woodruff Jr.; God be praised we're not!!

I've been wanting to see this turned into a movie for so long that it's kind of surreal to see that it's really happening. November can't come soon enough, I just hope it gets a wide release.

i dunno guys....

do we really want to see another CGI laden tome with the heart and story ripped out of it? SK's novels and stories have made notoriously horrible films. (ok ok, with a scant few exceptions) do i need to bring up the langoliers?

or pulse for that matter.

is darabont really directing? doesn't seem like the kind of thing he would do.

Um....given that Darabont started his directoral career with 1983's "The Woman in the Room", and later directed Shawshank and Mile, this sorta kinda seems to be exactly the sort of thing he would do.

Here's hoping he and his merry band knock it out of the park.

sure, i read it when it came out. must admit, didn't real the whole thread. have read more of it now.

thanks darkmites. i'm pretty jacked about this. ALWAYS thought the mist would make a killer movie, but had the old SK adaption paranoia. lol. frank darabont is someone i would trust to pull this one off.

Link to AICN- Darabont, Jane, and the bag boy. Wow.

Jane is looking a lot like Mark Antony from HBO's Rome.