A24 Rescues Stephen King Fantasy Epic And Turns It Into A Series

A bidding war broke out in 2022 when Stephen King released Fairy Tale, with Universal winning the rights to the hot property. The popular horror writer releasing a fantasy novel seemed like the perfect option for a film adaptation. However, the novel’s slow, character-focused beginning and prolific length made it a poor fit for the medium, so Universal cut it from the production schedule.

While the details of the deal are still being worked out, the series is expected to combine a new creative team with the scrapped film version’s writer-director. When Universal bought the rights to the Stephen King book, Paul Greengrass was attached as the writer and director of Fairy Tale. The script he wrote for the feature will be expanded and he may work as a director on the show joining showrunner J.H. Wyman. 

Stephen King is best known for his horror novels, but Fairy Tale is a straightforward modern fantasy novel. It follows 17-year-old Charlie Reade who finds himself in possession of a sundial that lets him travel to a magical world where a battle between good and evil is being fought. It’s a much more typical fantasy story than the author’s other forays into the genre, like The Dark Tower series. 

One choice Stephen King made that makes Fairy Tale better suited for a series than a film is the novel’s pacing, which prioritizes character development over plot. It takes over a hundred pages, about a full sixth of the novel, before Charlie enters the fantasy world of Empis. That gives the novel time to explore Charlie’s inner life, something fans of the book love that doesn’t work in a two-hour film. 

Executive producer Peter Rice, a fan of the book, jumped at the opportunity to adapt Stephen King’s Fairy Tale when Universal dropped it. Through A24, he worked to get the rights with the intention of turning it into a series, which he felt was a better way to adapt the source material. For fans of the book, saving it from abandonment and giving it the room it needs to develop. 

Of course, Stephen King has a long legacy of novels that have been adapted with great success, something A24 will look to reproduce with Fairy Tale. The most notable adaptations of his work have been films like The Shining, and The Green Mile. However, many of his novels have been successfully adapted into TV series, with The Stand and The Dead Zone as notable examples. 

Stephen King fans should be excited about A24 saving Fairy Tale from being abandoned. The show could be a huge hit, with a modern fantasy approach that has worked well for TV historically. Fans should expect more details, like casting and a potential release window, as the show enters development in the coming months.

Source: Deadline