I’m just going to go ahead and call it: 2017 is going to go down in history as the year that Stephen King killed the superhero movie (and not a moment too soon). The prolific horror author has been selling some of his most beloved properties to movie and television studios at a rate that would give Stan Lee a hard-on in recent months, including a big budget feature remake of It, a possibly quadrilogy of films (and even a TV spinoff!) based on the Dark Tower series, a television series version of The Mist, and a movie adaptation of Revival from the same guy planning to pen an adaptation of The Stand. In short, Roland Deschain > Steve Rogers, Tony Stark, and Bruce Wayne combined — COME AT ME BROS.
Just last week, it was announced that Netflix would be turning King’s 1992 psychological thriller Gerald’s Game into an original movie, and because Hollywood is about nothing if not taking a good idea and milking it dry, it is now being reported that the novella Hearts in Atlantis will be the next King story to receive a big screen adaptation as well.
Variety passes along the details of the upcoming film, which will come from British director Johannes Roberts (The Other Side of the Door) and his regular writing partner, Ernest Riera.
“As a teenager, discovering Stephen King’s books and their cinematic counterparts was what led me to want to become a filmmaker,” says Roberts. “The story ‘Hearts in Atlantis’ is my favorite piece of King’s writing. Turning this story into a movie had been a lifelong dream.”
Set in (you guessed it) a small coastal Maine town in 1966, Hearts centers around “a group of college boys and their first time away from home, their obsession and self-destruction, and what it means to be an adult in a world where, in the face of a devastating war no one understands, adults can no longer be trusted.” The story was one of two novellas and three short stories to be included in King’s 1999 collection of the same name, and actually received a loose adaptation back in 2001 starring Anthony Hopkins that opened to mixed reviews and failed to recoup its budget at the box office.
Let’s hope that Roberts’ vision for the film manages to take things in a slightly more intriguing direction, because I think the filmmaking industry could stand to have a few non-comic book adaptations actually make an impact at the box office. Otherwise, it’s just going to be the ad nauseam adventures of that pasty Steve Rogers from here on out — YEAH I SAID IT.
