While ‘The Dark Tower‘ bombed we all know that ‘It‘ is dominating the box office so it should be no surprise that another of Stephen King‘s works is getting the cinematic treatment and this time around it’s ‘Suffer the Little Children’.
Not only is ‘Suffer the Little Children’ coming to the big screen but we’ve just learned that Sean Carter will be directing and writing, fresh off his directorial debut with the thriller ‘Keep Watching’. Carter will also be producing along with Craig Flores, Nicolas Chartier, and Sriram Das. It should be noted that Flores is also currently involved in producing another work by King, the novel ‘Rose Madder’ with Assaf Berstein directing it.
In ‘Suffer the Little Children’ we take a look into the life of a first-grade schoolteacher who has just gone through a divorce. Things in her classroom start getting “unsettling” as the children don’t seem to be quite right from how they act to how they play with one another. Add in a sudden surge of deaths in this town and it’s hard to tell if paranoia is kicking in from the recent life changes or if something more sinister is at work.
‘Suffer the Little Children’ is not only an iconic piece from King’s body of work but was included in his well known 1993 collection ‘Nightmares & Dreamscapes’. This collection also included ‘Dolan’s Cadillac’ which was released as a film in 2008, ‘Chattery Teeth’ which was a segment in the television movie ‘Quicksilver Highway’, ‘The Moving Finger’ which was the season finale of the 1991 series ‘Monsters’, ‘Home Delivery’ which was turned into an animated short and produced by Guillermo del Toro, ‘Rainy Season’ which was made into a short film, ‘My Pretty Pony’ which was released as a short film starring Tobin Bell (‘Saw’), ‘Sorry, Right Number’ which came out on volume 4 of the ‘Tales from the Darkside’ compilation. Finally ‘You Know They Got a Hell of a Band’, ‘Crouch End’, ‘The Fifth Quarter’, ‘Umney’s Last Case’, ‘The End of the Whole Mess’ were all adapted for TNT’s ‘Nightmares & Dreamscapes series. This leaves very few works from the collection to have not seen a cinematic adaptation.
Talking about the story, Carter states:
“The Stephen King aesthetic has been imprinted into my psyche since I was a teenager, and Suffer the Little Children fits right into that classic King paradigm: a tragically flawed lead character put into a shockingly unimaginable scenario. It’s a tiny peek into a mythology that I can’t wait to expand into a full-length movie.”
On the author himself, Flores adds:
“Stephen King’s is one of today’s most prolific storytellers, and the concepts that he conjures immediately spark curiosity and a desire to follow him down the rabbit hole.”
This is a story that could truly work for horror and not need a huge budget. Horror stories with children in leading parts can often and easily be some of the craziest and scariest things out there and this seems to be the perfect tale to bring to the big screen.
Are you looking forward to checking out ‘Suffer the Little Children’? Share your thoughts below!
Source: Deadline
