Steven Spielberg teams with Stranger Things creators for Stephen King show
By Ashley Hurst
Steven Spielberg, Stephen King, and Stranger Things creators the Duffer brothers are teaming up to adapt King’s book The Talisman for Netflix.
Steven Spielberg is finally getting the opportunity to work on one of his dream projects, an adaptation of Stephen King and Pete Straub’s 1984 fantasy novel The Talisman. And if that wasn’t enough to get you excited, he’s doing it with Stranger Things creators Matt and Ross Duffer, per The Hollywood Reporter. Amblin Television and Paramount Television Studios are producing, with the final series to run on Netflix.
The Talisman follows teenager Jack Sawyer, who must embark on a quest to find a powerful artifact to save his mother from dying of cancer. The book takes readers across America and into Territories, a magic realm of myth and monsters. Spielberg acquired the rights to the book two years before it was even published, and has been trying tirelessly to bring an adaptation to our screens for over three decades, with little success. The Handmaid’s Tale director Mike Barker made an attempt to 2019, but nothing doing. It was once in development as a TNT miniseries, but didn’t make it to air.
With the Duffer Brothers signed on as executive producers, perhaps the project can finally emerge from development hell. Stranger Things writer and executive producer Curtis Gwinn will serve as showrunner. Stephen King will also be an executive producer.
Studios can’t get enough of King lately. His most recent property to be adapted for TV was The Stand, which ran on Paramount+ (formerly CBS All Access). A shame it wasn’t better, but King has a million other books ready for adaptation, so little harm done.
Hopefully, with Spielberg and the Duffer brothers behind it, not to mention the power of Netflix, The Talisman can prove more successful. If the Duffers know anything, it’s ’80s-era Stephen King novels, so it seems like a good match.
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