Emmy Award-winning helmer Greg Yaitanes (‘House MD’) is taking another trip to ‘Castle Rock’. “I’m directing the first episode [and] an episode later in the season, too,” he recently divulged to IndieWire. “[Co-creator] Dusty [Thomason] pitched me a departure episode later in the season that was too enticing to say no to, [but] I was happy to come in to launch the season. […] It was great to get that call.” Yaitanes previously helmed the Season 1 episode “The Queen.”
RELATED: Paul Sparks Has Been Cast To Replace Garrett Hedlund On ‘Castle Rock’ S2
Yaitanes has had a long career in television with too many credits to list, but he recently helmed the second episode of ‘The Twilight Zone’, entitled “Nightmare at 30,000 Feet.” Among his many credits are ‘Manhunt: Unabomber’, ‘Quarry’, ‘Banshee’, ‘Lost’, ‘Heroes’, ‘Damages’, and more.
Yaitanes says that the show will evolve with the second season:
“We wanted to evolve the look on a visual level, and move and be with characters more. One of the things that worked well with ‘The Queen’ was point of view. That episode had a strong point of view of character, so [we’re] bringing that into Annie’s story and giving the show […] more urgency this year, more tension. We’re taking the things that worked well in Season 1 and taking them up a level.”
The focus of Season 2 will be Annie Wilkes, portrayed by Lizzy Caplan, the obsessed nurse from ‘Misery’. The other major story arc involves mounting tensions with the small neighboring town of Jerusalem’s Lot, perhaps better known as ‘Salem’s Lot’. Tim Robbins plays crime boss Pop Merrill (‘The Sun Dogs’), who is dying of cancer. His nephew, John “Ace” Merrill (‘The Body’, ‘Needful Things’) played by Paul Sparks who is set to take over, but who is threatening a fragile peace with Jerusalem’s Lot.
Yaitanes added:
“To come back this year to launch a new season, a new story, a new cast — it was epic. Just to be able to geek out and be responsible for Annie Wilkes’ origin story, that’s my Stephen King nerd dream come true.
“We’re seeing more of Castle Rock than we did last year. It’s set back in the town. We’re going back to familiar places, and [also] new places the story didn’t touch on.”
Season 2 of ‘Castle Rock’ is filming now. Hulu has not yet announced when it will be released. How do things sound so far?
