New year, new edition of The King Beat! Per the author’s personal Twitter account, he welcomed in 2024 by rocking out to Social Distortion, Rancid, Anthrax, Metallica, Ozzy, Def Leppard, and Tony Bennett – and this week’s column is packed with goodies about adaptations and collectables.
The first King Beat of 2024 has Thomas Jane’s vision for a From A Buick 8 miniseries, expressed gratitude from the screenwriter behind the upcoming adaptation of The Long Walk, and a look at some new collectables I’ve added to my personal Stephen King collection. Let’s dig in!
Thomas Jane Is No Longer Developing From A Buick 8, But I’m Hoping He Eventually Gets Another Shot
It late 2019, Thomas Jane got to work trying to add a fourth Stephen King project to his impressive resume. Having previously made Dreamcatcher, The Mist and 1922, the actor/producer acquired the rights to make an adaptation of the novel From A Buick 8. It was an exciting development for what is an underrated King book… but things have evidently changed quite a bit in the last few years, but Jane discusses all of the developments in the latest episode of The Kingcast.
The Fangoria podcast has published a two-hour interview with Thomas Jane as their first episode of 2024, and while the bulk of the conversation is dedicated to the aforementioned film 1922, that conversation is preceded with talk about From A Buick 8. Jane was directly asked by co-host Eric Vespe about the status of the adaptation, and Jane explained how the COVID-19 pandemic wholly upended what he had been working on for the Stephen King adaptation:
The week we were supposed to go out and pitch it is when the world shut down. So we put that on hold. And then when we started kind of creeping out of the pandemic, I got Mark [Fergus] and Hawk [Ostby], who wrote Children of Men and Iron Man, and they also helped create The Expanse. So I brought them on board and we were working on it, and then we had the rug pulled out from under us because Stephen's agent had actually sort of without sort of bothering to tell us, he'd informed us that our lease had lapsed...
Evidently there was a ticking clock built into the option for which Thomas Jane and producer Courtney Lauren Penn had negotiated, and it wasn’t protected from the unprecedented events that led to Hollywood shutting down in 2020. Because forward progress was not accomplished with the project at a certain point in time, the option lapsed and the rights reverted back to Stephen King.
Thomas Jane added that there was an attempt to get the rights back, but he says that James Wan’s production company, Atomic Monster, now holds them. The actor/producer continued,
It was just because of the pandemic – technically the option had lapsed a long time ago because nobody was doing anything 'cause the pandemic [shut everything down]. So it was sort of a matter of miscommunication. I think James Wan's company has it now, and we were hoping that they would turn in a different, you know, a draft that like nobody liked, but apparently they do like it. Because obviously we were first in line to get it back. So we'll see what happens. We continue to follow it. The road from script to screen can be long and circuitous.
First published in 2002, From A Buick 8 is primarily set in and around a police station in the town of Statler, Pennsylvania. In a garage behind the barracks is parked a closely guarded secret that only a select few people know about: it looks like a 1954 Buick Roadmaster, but the details of it are not quite right, and it is frequently at the center of dangerous and disturbing supernatural events. The history of the entity is revealed over the course of the book as the veteran police officers tell stories about it to the son of a trooper who was recently killed during a traffic stop.
Original reports about Thomas Jane’s adaptation described it as a movie, but he explains in the new interview that the plan was an eight-hour miniseries. In fact, he had some blunt thoughts on why a standard feature version of From A Buick 8 wouldn’t work:
It had to be a miniseries. It had been through so many permutations, you know – John Carpenter at one point, I can't remember... a slew of folks sort of toyed around and have toyed around with Buick 8 over the years, and nobody could really crack it. That's why it's never been done – because they were all trying to do the two-hour format... The basic, two-hour version is sort of pointless, you know? 'At the end of the day, they got this car in a garage and it eats people. The end' would be pretty close to what you'd get. The miniseries, the eight hour version for me, was the perfect way to tell that story.
One could make the argument that the majority of Stephen King books would be better suited for adaptations as miniseries instead of films, but From A Buick 8 is a case where, as Thomas Jane explains, a movie just can’t do the material justice. It features not only a nonlinear structure, but it also regularly changes perspectives, and none of it should be shortchanged because of a limited runtime.
In addition to the individual stories being exciting and chock full of monstrous abominations from other dimensions, it’s also a contemplative tome about grief, and while Thomas Jane acknowledges in the podcast interview that the end of the book can be perceived as frustrating, he has an interesting perspective on what the story is really about:
I saw it ultimately as a sort of a meditation on death, you know? The car and what's on the other side of that car represents the other side of the veil. And the way it affects different characters – vastly different. Everyone has a vastly different sort of reaction to the presence of this veil, this porthole into another world, which always felt like death to me… That's the key to the story; it's this kid coming of age or growing into his adult confrontation with death. 'Cause kids don't have to confront death... These Tiktokers think they're gonna live forever, and now they're just waking up to, ‘Wait a second: is this train going on without me whether I'm on it or not?!'
If James Wan doesn’t end up producing an adaptation of From A Buick 8, I very much want to see Thomas Jane get the rights back, as he seems to be really locked into what should be said with the story.
Filmmaker JT Mollner Is Kicking Off 2024 With Work On The Long Walk, And His Enthusiasm Is Infectious
Will The Long Walk finally make it into production? That’s a standout Stephen King-related question that comes to mind as we dive headlong into 2024. The last few months have seen some big ups and downs: last August, director André Øvredal revealed his departure from the project, but in late November we learned that Lionsgate is developing an adaptation with filmmaker Francis Lawrence attached. My fingers are tightly crossed hoping that the movie can finally get made, and my excitement is only being buoyed by the expressed enthusiasm from screenwriter JT Mollner.
Mollner has been hired by Lionsgate to write the new adaptation of The Long Walk, and this past Sunday, he concluded 2023 by posting on Twitter about how stoked he is for the opportunity. Demonstrating an extreme passion for the source material, he wrote,
I’ll be kicking off 2024 with a true dream job: Adapting one of my favorite novels for a brilliant director. Thanks to @Lionsgate, @royleeroy25, Francis Lawrence & the great @StephenKing for this amazing opportunity. #TheLongWalk
Later, responding to a reply to his post, JT Mollner added that his love of Stephen King’s work runs deep and has a tie to a notable childhood memory:
Awe thanks for this. Means a lot. I’m a life long SK fanatic. The first novel I ever read was Carrie and I was sent to the principals office for having it at school. So this feels sorta perfect.
Mollner’s credits include the 2023 Fantastic Fest entry Strange Darling (which he both wrote and directed), and he most definitely has his work cut out for him adapting The Long Walk. Originally published with King’s pseudonym Richard Bachman, the book is a work of dystopian fiction where teens from around the country participate in a “last man standing” contest where competitors have to continuously walk at a constant rate in hopes of winning a dream prize. The penalty for trying to run away or slowing down too many times, however, is execution.
Filmmakers including Frank Darabont and George A. Romero unsuccessfully tried to make feature adaptations of The Long Walk – but I’m deciding to stay optimistic that Francis Lawrence and JT Mollner will finally bring the dark and powerful story to life.
Kicking Off 2024 With New Additions To My Stephen King Collection: A Pair Of Can-Tahs And A King On Screen Limited Edition Blu-ray
I’m hopeful that my Stephen King collection will grow in some considerable ways over the course of the next year (and not just because You Like It Darker is arriving in the spring), and I’m not wasting any time. We may only be a few days into 2024, but I’ve already added some cool items that have arrived in the mail.
Featured at the center of the image above is the new Blu-ray edition of the documentary King On Screen, which has been made available with an exclusive slipcover by the boutique label Vinegar Syndrome. The movie was released last year and offers a fun reflection on the many decades of King adaptation – featuring interviews with talent like Mike Flanagan, Frank Darabont, Mick Garris, Vincenzo Natali, and Lewis Teague. In addition to the Blu-ray having a great look, there are multiple extras including deleted scenes and an alternate cut of the feature.
King On Screen arrived this week after I placed a pre-order a few weeks ago, but the other two totems could perhaps be described as impulse buys. Featured on the right is a replica of the sinister Can-tah that is featured in the novel Desperation – modeled after the look of the prop that was used in the Mick Garris TV adaptation from 2005. It was originally included in a Bam! Horror box, but you can easily find them on eBay.
Having purchased a Can-tah with evil vibes, I felt that it was only right that I create a balance in my collection, and that’s how I ended up with the scrimshaw turtle. I purchased it from ScrimshawCollector.com, and while it’s not specifically made to look like the hypnotic carved turtle that Susannah Dean uses in The Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah, I think it’s a wonderful match to how the item is described in the book:
She reached in and brought out not a stone but a small scrimshaw turtle. Made of ivory, from the look of it. Each detail of the shell was tiny and precisely executed, although it had been marred by one tiny scratch that looked almost like a question-mark. The turtle’s head poked halfway out. Its eyes were tiny black dots of some tarry stuff, and looked incredibly alive.
I recommend both as accent pieces for any Constant Reader’s Stephen King-dedicated bookshelves.
Recommendation Of The Week: "You Know They Got A Hell Of A Band"
Stephen King playing out 2023 with a blend of metal, hard rock, and Tony Bennett got me thinking about his long expressed passion for music, and "You Know They Got A Hell Of A Band" feels like an apropos recommendation of the week as a result. The short story can be found in the pages of the 1993 collection Nightmares & Dreamscapes, and it’s a freaky deaky trip to rock and roll heaven that packs some cool surprises and a mean final punch.
That does it for this week’s edition of The King Beat, but you’ll find my latest column here on CinemaBlend every Thursday throughout 2024, and you can learn more about King history in the meantime with my Adapting Stephen King series.
