JJ Abrams Is Adapting A New Stephen King Crime Series
Stephen King is a prolific writer and many of his stories have been adapted for the screen over the decades. Still, it's surprising just how many adaptations have recently been announced.
This article is more than 2 years old
Stephen King is a prolific writer and many of his stories have been adapted for the screen over the decades. Still, it’s surprising just how many adaptations have recently been announced. A week ago, we reported that Lucy Liu is set to star in a series that will adapt the King novel Later. Yesterday, it was announced that a new movie adapting his terrifying short story Boogeyman is on the way. Today, we can report that yet another one is on the way. Bad Robot Productions, the company owned by producer JJ Abrams, has picked up the Stephen King novel Billy Summers. The plan is to turn the novel into a limited series.
Billy Summers is one of Stephen King’s more recent novels. It was published in the late summer of 2021 and immediately hit the New York Time’s Bestseller list, where it stayed for quite a while, making it a prime choice for JJ Abrams’ production company to pick up. The Stephen King story follows a killer for hire who will only murder folks he deems deserving of a violent end. After working as a sniper in the business for quite a while, he wants to be done. He agrees to do just one last job. Then, of course, everything goes wrong. You can see the cover of the Stephen King novel below.
This isn’t the first Stephen King adaptation that JJ Abrams has been a part of. Previously, Abrams has worked as a producer on the Hulu adaptation of 11.22.63, Hulu’s Castle Rock, and AppleTV+’s Lisey’s Story. Currently, Billy Summers is set to be adapted by Ed Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz, with Ed Zwick set to direct. Currently, Abrams isn’t expected to take on either a writing or directing role in the project.
When fans think of JJ Abrams, they mostly associate him with his role as writer and director. He worked on Star Trek and Star Wars movies, with his most recent turn as a director on Rise of Skywalker. However, his most prolific work has been as a producer. IMDb gives him 77 credits in that role, versus 16 as director. As a producer, he takes on a wider range of genres and types of projects, with many of them being series on streaming. Some of his recent productions include Lisey’s Story, Lovecraft Country, and Westworld.
As of right now, Billy Summers has only been announced as a project. The JJ Abrams production doesn’t have a cast or a release date. This makes it one of the Stephen King projects fans may be waiting a while for, with Boogeyman and Later possibly coming much sooner. Another Stephen King project in the works that may be a while coming yet is a remake of Christine. It’s been reported that Bryan Fuller has completed a draft of the script and sent it to Stephen King for review. Bryan Fuller is the creator behind Hannibal and Pushing Daisies. He has said that he feels confident Stephen King will approve of his script because he feels he stayed faithful to the book. This won’t be the first time Bryan Fuller has worked on a Stephen King adaptation. Previously, he wrote the script for another remake, the 2002 Carrie. Hopefully Bryan Fuller is right and the new adaptation will be scheduling production dates soon.
