You’ve likely seen (or at least heard of) director Mike Flanagan’s horror films at the cinemas over the last few years. What you may not know, however, is that the man who directed ‘Oculus’ and the upcoming ‘Ouija: Origin of Evil’ has been working for years on a very particular “passion project,” a feature-film adaptation of the 1992 Stephen King suspense/horror novel ‘Gerald’s Game.’
The story told by the novel is likely one of King’s most sexualized and psychologically-deranged ever told, about a housewife that gets fed up with her husband’s kinky sex games, accidentally kills him while she is handcuffed to the bed, and then has to deal with voices and terrors that may be real or may just be in her head. In a recent interview with Rue Morgue magazine, Flanagan talked about another horror film of his, ‘Hush,’ and how that film’s success on Netflix has led to his new deal with the company:
“I view HUSH, actually, as my most successful movie. All of Netflix’s numbers are proprietary, so I don’t get to look at them, but the way I’ve heard people talking, it’s been viewed an amazing number of times, and the reception has been very, very positive. Coincidentally, Stephen King watched HUSH at home on Netflix and tweeted about it, which kind of blew my mind. And that got us talking about GERALD’S GAME again. If you know the source material, you’ll know there are a lot of challenges inherent in that story. Not so much the narrative challenges of how to adapt it; it took me 10 years of constantly thinking about the book to crack the cinematic version. But it’s a real challenge for financiers and distributors, who say, ‘Yeah, we love your work, we love Stephen King, but this story, this particular story? We don’t know how it works,’ without reshaping it to fit a much more conventional structure, which I did not want to do. And Netflix, because of how well HUSH has done, said, ‘We’re really interested in this, and we’d like to do it the way you want to do it.’ And that eliminated the pressure of having to test-screen the movie and define the demographic that’s going to watch it—all of that stuff that typically comes into the conversation when you’re trying to figure out how to market a film for a wide theatrical release. It just cleared the table, so that I can make the movie I want to make. I’m hoping very much that we can get that movie up on its feet soon.”
The real question, of course, is will King himself be involved in any way? Flanagan answered that question thusly:
“That’s going to be entirely up to him. From what I’ve heard, sometimes he’s very involved when it comes to approvals and things like that, and sometimes he can be more hands-off. So I guess that remains to be seen. I would personally want him to be as involved as he possibly wants to be. And I think the more Stephen is involved, the more he’ll see the reverence that I have for this book. I would love for him to be part of this, and I hope he will be.”
No official word yet on casting, production schedules, or release date for ‘Gerald’s Game.’
Source: Blastr
If Tony Schaab had a Mega Blaster for a hand and a robotic dog named Rush that turned into a Hoverboard, you’d better believe that he’d spend all his time fighting Dr. Wily and his crazy mechanized inventions too! A lover of most things sci-fi and horror, Tony is an author by day and a DJ by night. Come hang out with Tony on Facebook and Twitter to hear him spew semi-funny nonsense and get your opportunity to finally put him in his place.
