A lot of Stephen King properties have been optioned for film and TV of late, and now his short story THE REACH, from the 80s collection SKELETON CREW is being trolled out for buyers in the coming weeks at Cannes in the hopes of generating hype and an interested buyer to shepherd the project to theaters. As JoBlo.com mentions, King wants to be remembered for THE REACH more than any other story he’s written, which makes me wonder why I’ve never read it and why it’s not been snapped up in a movie deal before. Nothing’s in place yet, but does anyone doubt that something is going to happen? We’ll bring the news to you when it does.

Stephen King’s sci-fi saga has had a long and tortured road to the big screen, much like Roland and company in the novels. But, it sounds like Ron Howard is optimistic, and so should we. JoBlo reports that Howard recently met with Akiva Goldsman (FRINGE) and Erica Huggins to discuss the script and story that would bring it to TV and the theatres in conjunction with HBO. There is no timetable yet, but the project is not dead (and Javier Bardem is still linked to star), and Howard’s enthusiasm for the project is hard to deny. Stay tuned for more details.

Stephen King’s EYES OF THE DRAGON is coming to SyFy in the near future, as either a TV series or TV movie, according to Shock Till You Drop. With the success of GAME OF THRONES and the return of Middle-Earth on the horizon, fantasy is back in the limelight. Written in 1987, the book has all the staples of fantasy lore you need: kings, towers, murder and presumably, dragons. Most King fans have been waiting for news on Roland and the tower for a long time, but unfortunately, this is a different story. Stephen King likes his towers and characters named Roland. Michael Taylor and Jeff Vintar (writer for I, ROBOT) are tasked with the adaptation that should have a killer logo, if they model it after the above book cover.

The official King Facebook page gives the scoop: “Using mosaic design technologies, thousands of readers’ images will be incorporated in the illustration on the back cover of THE WIND THROUGH THE KEYHOLE. One winner will also be selected at random to receive the entire Stephen King backlist published by Hodder in the UK.”

Enter by uploading your photo over at their Facebook page. The closing date for entries is 23^rd January 2012.

THE WIND THROUGH THE KEYHOLE comes out in April of this year.

According to Icons of Fright, King and Pavia worked closely together on the project, each of them choosing two King shorts, reportedly a mix of new and old stories. While exact story details are not yet available, Pavia’s Facebook update on New Year’s day reveals he is, “…writing about churning storm clouds, Derry, Maine and the Grim Reaper.” Count us in!

Stephen King (image courtesy StephenKing.com)

Below you’ll find several frames from the series, and here is a link to a PDF of art (sans color or text) from the first eleven pages of issue #1 to whet your appetite. (PDF courtesy IDW Publishing and StephenKing.com)

Synopsis from StephenKing.com:
Several years after his wife’s death, novelist Mike Noonan still suffers writer’s block. A dream inspires him to return to the couple’s summer retreat in western Maine, a lakeside house called Sara Laughs. Shortly after arriving, Noonan is caught in the middle of a custody battle involving the daughter of an attractive young widow and the child’s enormously wealthy grandfather. He also discovers that Sara Laughs is haunted and that his late wife, Joanna, still has something to tell him.

Watch the film in its entirety HERE and share your thoughts below…

In addition to the release of the author’s 11/22/63 and A & E’s sneak peek at the adaptation of BAG OF BONES, another King property, UNDER THE DOME, is moving forward at Showtime, with LOST writer Brian K. Vaughan set to adapt the epic story for Dreamworks, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Vaughan certainly has his science fiction credentials in order.  Not only does he have LOST on his resume, but he is also the creator of Y: THE LAST MAN and THE RUNAWAYS and has worked on a slew of other comics project.

UNDER THE DOME focuses on the residents of a small Maine town who become trapped when an invisible barrier suddenly appears around the town’s perimeter.  Featuring a sprawling cast of characters, DOME shows the lengths people are willing to go to maintain their power and the base instincts that come out in all of us when cut off from safety.  The premise seems ideally suited for a successful television run, and with Vaughan signing on, this show just gets more and more promising.  Let’s hope casting news isn’t too far behind.

The plot, as King novels are wont to do, focuses on a Maine author whose reality begins to unravel.  Here’s the official synopsis:

“Bag of Bones” is a ghost story of grief and lost love’s enduring bonds, about an innocent child caught in a terrible crossfire and a new love haunted by past secrets. Melissa George (“In Treatment”), Annabeth Gish (“Brotherhood”), Anika Noni Rose (Dreamgirls), William Schallert (“The Patty Duke Show”), Jason Priestley (“Beverly Hills, 90210”) and Caitlin Carmichael (“True Blood”) also star. 

In “Bag of Bones,” bestselling novelist Mike Noonan (Brosnan) is unable to stop grieving after the sudden death of his wife Jo (Gish). Suffering from writer’s block, a dream inspires him to return to the couple’s lakeside retreat in western Maine. While there, Mike befriends an attractive young widow, Mattie (George) and her daughter Kyra (Carmichael), and becomes involved in a custody battle with the child’s enormously wealthy grandfather, Max (Schallert). Though his ability to write suddenly returns, Mike is plagued by ever-escalating nightmares and mysterious ghostly visitations from Sara Tidwell (Rose), a blues singer whose spirit lingers in the house. As he is haunted by the many secrets at the lake, Mike comes to realize that his late wife still has something to tell him.

BAG OF BONES airs December 11 and 12 on A & E.  You can check out the images below.

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The other type of King novel, actually the more prolific of the two, is the type that focuses on one character, usually a writer or an English teacher from Maine, and his or her battle against insanity or some supernatural entity or a combination of the two.  These include recent stories such as LISEY’S STORY and DUMA KEY.

11/22/63 is the latter type of novel.  For those fans of King’s sprawling narratives that focus on a variety of characters, this book isn’t like that.  But don’t be disheartened.  Even though King focuses on one character, he infuses that character with a number of admirable traits and sets him on a journey with the potential to change the universe.

The novel revolves around a well-worn science fiction premise:  what if you could go back and change history?  How would that affect the future?  Would it even be possible?  In trying to change the past, are you just moving it along more swiftly?  King answers those questions, and then some.

In this case, Jake Epping, a mild mannered English teacher from Maine, must go back to November 22, 1963, the fateful day when Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated President John F. Kennedy.  An acquaintance who runs a local diner shows Epping a portal to the past that connects to the bygone era of 1958 and explains all the lives that could be saved by stopping Oswald.

The first couple hundred pages serve as exposition before the real meat of the story.  Although this exposition takes awhile, it did an effective job of pulling the reader’s head into the constraints of this universe.  Jake’s friend, Al, explains the rules of time travel, and Jake travels to the past to correct a certain wrong that befell a GED student of his many years ago.  In so doing, he learns the intricacies of his jump to the past, how it affects the future, and how the past affects him.  You see, the past is the real antagonist of the story, not Oswald.  It doesn’t want to be changed, and it’s going to fight tooth and nail to stop Jake.

After this “test mission” is concluded, the proper story can begin.  But that story is not what you think.  Those expecting Jake to rush out and immediately set to work killing Oswald will be sorely disappointed.  The portal takes Jake to 1958, five years before the assassination.  In those five years, Jake has to make sure that Oswald really is the one responsible for the murder of the President, since numerous conspiracy theorists suggest otherwise.  So Jake must wait.  And wait.  And in that waiting lies the beating heart of the story.

Previous King stories have gone for the jugular, but here he goes for the heart.  Jake meets the love of his life in an idyllic Texas town called Jodie, and this is where the majority of the novel takes place.  A stranger in a strange land, Jake is taken in by a colorful cast of characters who treat him like one of their own.  He becomes an integral part of their lives and vice versa.  And as he falls deeper and deeper in love with both the town and the school librarian, Sadie, he has second thoughts about his mission and his capacity to go back to the present.

Although well-regarded as the most popular writer in horror, many of King’s works blend the sentimental with the horrific.  Here the sentimental takes over, but that’s not a bad thing at all.  It’s a different kind of King book, but his touches are still there:  The way he’s able to puncture the facade of a friendly face to dig at the insanity that lies just beneath the surface.  The preternatural ability of a character to develop a kind of ESP that goes beyond simple intuition.  Ties to other King novels, including a particularly awesome callback to the classic IT.

Even though the love story is front and center, that story is broken up by pain, tragedy, and regret.  The past doesn’t want to be changed, remember?  As Jake attempts to fulfill his mission, the fabric of the universe itself conspires against him, sometimes with horrific consequences.  It doesn’t give much away to say that it all leads up to an extended action sequence on the fateful day of 11/22/63, and here King doesn’t disappoint.  I won’t give anything away, but the ending of the novel is pitch perfect.  There’s not a false beat to be found.

There are no glaring flaws with 11/22/63, but fans of King’s books know that he has a tendency to overly foreshadow upcoming events.  In THE DARK TOWER series and some of his other novels, the narrator will often talk ad nauseum about what we’re about to witness, especially as it concerns the deaths of characters.  That over-foreshadowing is in abundance here.  Even though the past is doing its darnedest to stop him, it takes away some of the tension to have the narrator come right out ahead of time and tell us who is going to act as the past’s weapon of choice.  And although it says on the front flap of the book that Jake is going to fall in love, he himself doesn’t have to tell us a page or two before it happens.  This narrative tic takes away some of the shock of what happens, if not necessarily the impact certain events have on the protagonist.

But shock really isn’t the point here, is it?  This is a character study about a man torn between love and duty, selfishness and honor.  And in that way, it succeeds on all fronts.  At the beginning of the book, Jakes says that he’s never been a crying man.  It’s a theme that carries throughout the book.  Even if you share that sentiment, there’s a good chance you’ll be bawling your eyes out by the story’s absolutely beautiful conclusion.

Product Information:

11/22/63 by Stephen KIng

Release Date:  November 8, 2011

Scribner

$35.00