Hearts in Suspension-—the new Stephen King book that contains his long essay “Five to One, One in Five,” the novella “Hearts in Atlantis,” four of his “King’s Garbage Truck” essays from the University of Maine newspaper, and essays by a dozen fellow students—will be out from the University of Maine Press in a few weeks. The book also contains a photograph and document gallery that chronicles his university years. UMaine will host the book launch on November 7 at the Collins Center for the Arts in Orono. Read the full press release here. The university is also collecting applications from English professors to fill the Stephen E. King Chair in Literature they recently created
In related news, British director Johannes Roberts plans to adapt the novella “Hearts in Atlantis” as a feature called simply Hearts.
Charlie the Choo-Choo, a children’s picture book based on the text and Ned Dameron’s illustrations found in The Waste Lands, will be published at the end of November in a trade edition. The author’s name is listed as Beryl Evans, as in the Dark Tower books, though an argument could have been made for Claudia y Inez Bachman. An earlier version of the book was given away at Comic-Con last summer as a Dark Tower promo, with an actress pretending to be Beryl Evans. Some of those volumes have been sold on the secondary market for a crazy amount of money.
Scribner has acquired the rights to publish Sleeping Beauties, King’s collaboration with son Owen King. The book is described as being set in the near future and revolves around a women’s prison in the South. The publication date hasn’t been set, but it will appear in 2017.
During the Q&A before King’s appearance at the Library of Congress in late September, he said that he has a book in progress that deals with one of the characters from the Mercedes series that’s “an outright scary novel.” In a subsequent interview, he confirmed that it will feature Holly Gibney. At the same event, King said that “with any luck” he and Peter Straub will start writing the next Talisman book in February 2017.
There have also been announcements concerning the TV adaptation of Mr. Mercedes, which was stalled by the untimely death of Anton Yelchin, who was supposed to play Brady Hartsfield. The 10-part series, slated to air on AT&T Audience Network in 2018, will star Brendan Gleeson as Detective Bill Hodges and Harry Treadaway as Brady. David E. Kelley will act as showrunner, with Jack Bender directing.
King’s new short story “The Music Room” appears in the anthology In Sunlight or In Shadow: Stories Inspired by the Paintings of Edward Hopper, edited by Lawrence Block and due out in December.
In a surprise development, Netflix gave the green light for Mike Flanagan to adapt Gerald’s Game, and the cameras started rolling in Mobile, Alabama, this week. Carla Gugino and Bruce Greenwood will star as the Burlingames, with Henry Thomas, Carel Struycken, Kate Siegel, and Chiara Aurelia also appearing in the film.
The remake of It and The Dark Tower have both wrapped filming. There was a momentary leak of an incomplete trailer of the latter a couple of weeks ago that stirred up a lot of excitement. Entertainment Weekly gave The Dark Tower a lot of coverage in conjunction with Comic-Con. See the links list below for some of the articles. There will also be a tie-in book, The Making of the Dark Tower: The Art of the Film, by Daniel Wallace, due out shortly before the movie premieres.
Serious plans are underway, too, for the first of the proposed TV series adaptations, which is supposed to focus on events from Wizard and Glass. Idris Elba and Tom Taylor (Jake) will appear in the show’s wrap-around segments. MRC has committed to making a pilot and 10-13 episodes, with shooting to commence next year for a 2018 run, although no network or streaming service has yet signed up to air it.
All that and The Mist TV series, too, which will air on Spike next year after filming in the Halifax region of Nova Scotia this summer.
And now, some links!
- National Book Festival
- Entertainment Weekly’s Dark Tower coverage
- Unlocking the film version of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower
- Idris Elba on breathing fire into Stephen King’s Gunslinger
- Idris Elba Explains Roland’s Relationship with the Man in Black
- Matthew McConaughey ends worlds as The Man in Black
- What the film changes (and keeps) from Stephen King’s books
- How The Dark Tower movie connects to Stephen King’s other books
- Pieces of Eight: What The Dark Tower movie draws from each Stephen King novel
- Other Dark Tower related items
- An Entourage of One: On the Road with Stephen King (by his publicist)
- Stephen King weighs in on those creepy Carolina clown sightings
- Stephen King Reviews Emma Donoghue’s Latest Novel (NY Times)
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