Another Truly Terrifying Stephen King Story Is Becoming A Movie With Chris Messina
Another horrifying Stephen King movie is on the way!
This article is more than 2 years old
Tired of Stephen King adaptations yet? Tough. Because it’s clear neither Hollywood nor screen audiences feel the same. The bestselling author has yet another adaptation on the way from one of his first published books. Two rising stars are on board to adapt King’s 1973 short story The Boogeyman.
Deadline announced the new Stephen King movie was on the way on Monday. The film will star Chris Messina, who recently appeared alongside Elizabeth Banks and Sigourney Weaver in the drama Call Jane. He’ll be joined by Sophie Thatcher, who enjoyed the breakout role of the teenage version of Juliette Lewis’ Natalie on the Showtime drama Yellowjackets. Messina and Thatcher’s respective roles haven’t been announced, but Deadline says The Boogeyman will feature a family made prey to a malevolent presence in their home. The family includes a teenage daughter and a grieving father, and it seems likely those are the roles the actors have been tapped for.
Rob Savage (Host) is directing The Boogeyman. Fittingly, considering it’s a Stephen King story, the script has the fingerprints of a small army of writers known for working on acclaimed horror films. The A Quiet Place writing team of Scott Beck and Bryan Woods along with Akela Cooper (Malignant) were the first to tackle the writing duties. Deadline reports the script is being rewritten by Mark Heyman (Black Swan). Beck and Woods are continuing as executive producers. There’s no firm release date yet, but the film will premiere on Hulu and production is expected to begin in early 2023.
Originally published in 1973 in the magazine Cavalier, Stephen King’s short story The Boogeyman was later reprinted in King’s very first short story collection — 1978’s Night Shift. While King has since published 10 other short story collections — the latest being 2020’s If It Bleeds — producers continue to return to mine Night Shift for the bones of new movies. Films like Maximum Overdrive (based on Trucks), Children of the Corn, The Mangler, Sometimes They Come Back, and The Lawnmower Man were all inspired by stories from Night Shift. Meanwhile, King’s stories The Ledge and Quitters, Inc. were used for different chapters of the 1985 horror anthology film Cat’s Eye.
In 1976, director Brian De Palma brought Carrie — based on the 1974 novel of the same name — to the big screen, introducing moviegoers to the horror of Stephen King. That was the first film adaptation of a King novel, but hardly the last. For the four and a half decades since Carrie, King’s work has continued to be adapted to film, TV, comics, and even video games. Some — like The Shining, The Stand, It, Pet Sematary, and more — have been adapted multiple times and there doesn’t seem to be any plan to end the adaptations any time soon.
Just last week it was announced that Lucy Liu will be starring in a miniseries based on King’s 2021 novel Later. The same production company helping bring Later to life — Blumhouse Television — is also working on adapting King’s short story Mr. Harrigan’s Phone. The latter film will star Donald Sutherland (The Hunger Games) and Jaeden Martell (It, 2017).
