2025 is in the running for the best year ever for Stephen King adaptations, with mega-standouts like the gory mayhem of Oz Perkins’ The Monkey, the bleak masterpiece The Long Walk, and the life-affirming journey of The Life of Chuck. No moratoriums are in place, however, so we can look forward to plenty of other upcoming horror movies and shows inspired by King’s works. Such as this wildly unexpected new announcement.
Indie studio Intrinsic Value Films is set to bring several high-interest projects to the American Film Market, which takes place from November 11-15, and one of those pitches is ann adaptation of King’s poignant short story “Mister Yummy,” which was included in the 2015 collection The Bazaar of Bad Dreams. (It’s one of only two stories in the anthology that hadn’t ever been published previously.)
The screenplay for the Mister Yummy feature is being handled by up-and-coming screenwriter Troy Blake, whose only other credit at the moment is for the as-yet-unproduced crime thriller The Trespassers, adapted from the posthumously published story of the same name. Producer Thomas Mahoney, whose recent productions includes 2023’s Only the Good Survive and The Line, will be behind both of the Blake-scripted projects. (Mahoney is also producing the upcoming horror Claire, which reunites Jessica Jones’ Krysten Ritter and Carrie-Anne Moss.)
Why "Mister Yummy" Is Such An Unexpected Story To Adapt
For one, this is one of those Stephen King tales that takes a sweeping step back from traditionally gory or spooky horror storytelling, and delves more into emotional introspections surrounding the fleetingness of life. And two, it doesn't exactly lay out an extremely lengthy or complicated plot, so it will likely require quite a bit of additional crafting to expand these characters' lives for live-action.
To that end, I'm really hoping Blake, Mahoney and other creatives choose not to change too much about the story, particularly the timeline setting and the specifics that go along with it. Described as being a "haunting tale," the synopsis from Intrinsic Value (via Deadline) goes on to say:
The story follows a man confronting mortality where death waits around every corner and regret becomes the ghost that never leaves.
More specifically, the story's main character Ollie Franklin is winding down his days in an assisted living facility, where he shares stories about his life with a fellow elderly man. His life story is filled with complications, as he grew up as a gay man in the 1980s when the AIDS crisis was peaking. It was around that time when his existence was forever affected by meeting the handsome entity dubbed by others as "Mister Yummy."
Already, it sounds unlike any other Stephen King adaptation I can think of, since dancing in '80s gay bars isn't exactly prominent in classics like Pet Semetary and Cujo. It also sounds like a far quieter and limited in scope than a lot of other King adaptations. But I hope the powers that be decide to stick with this scope, rather than trying to beef everything up for the big screen. Genre fiction doesn't usually coincide with the AIDS epidemic, giving this the edge to be truly unique.
Also, while I'm tossing hopes around, can somebody cast Matt Bomer in this already?
While “Mister Yummy” will be the first story from The Bazaar of Bad Dreams to reach full fruition if it does get made, it definitely isn’t the first entry to be at the center of potential adaptation news. Even ahead of its publication, one fo the short stories included — “Bad LIttle Kid” — was optioned to get turned into a feature from producer Laurent Bouzereau back in 2014, with “Drunken Fireworks” (which debuted as an audiobook novella) optioned in 2015 for a feature starring James Franco. “Mile 81” was attached to director Alistair Legrand in 2019, and a year later, Lionsgate opted in to adapt “The Little Green God of Agony” as a movie scripted by Ian B. Goldberg and Richard Naing.
None of those projects ever reached the production stage, however, so let’s hope that Mister Yummy has more luck than that on its way to getting made. Also, if anyone wants to spin a more comedic King adaptation akin to The Monkey out of some of these Bazaar stories, we’d be perfectly okay with that.
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