Well, now I bring you the exciting news that he’s taking on CARRIE for (Amazon) Prime Video, a platform known for its willingness to spend money on just about anything.
I would pretty much hate this whole idea, but Flanagan has done a bunch of great stuff.
He also owns the rights to THE DARK TOWER, is working on a movie of a King short story, and is working on a remake of THE EXORCIST. A busy man indeed.
I would prefer all his efforts go into a long series of The Dark Tower. I trust him to do it, starting from scratch, and to do it right. Make it 24-40 episodes, each an hour long.
Carrie? I guess…I mean, we kind of know this one already.
If it was anyone else I would be pretty blase and say “why?”. But it’s Mike Flanagan and I will give a look at anything he’s connected to. Ditto another version of the Exorcist.
I hope he gives the talented and gorgeous Kate Siegel( his wife) the role of Ms. Desjardin.
I do wonder, though, how you pad that story to make it last eight episodes.
I believe the article said it t comes out Sept. 25. I’m looking forward to it; it’s a good story with lots of potential.
For anyone not familiar, it’s not scary but rather poignant; another of MF’ s long suits.
Carrie is slightly uncomfortable in the modern age where we’re conflicted in how to respectfully treat abuse, especially if it leads to anti-social behavior, all too often in the form of mass shootings. Which is a way Carrie can be looked at, even if the metaphorical gun is psychic.
[ note - not dismissing the major issues of gun violence and school shootings, nor the role our ease of access and culture plays in it, but the uncomfortable nature of “mental illness” and violence as it intersects with schools ]
So, yeah, there are other properties I’d like to see made. In the realm of all of recent young kids in magical fantasy settings, I think it might be fun to see a version of Eyes of the Dragon, which plays in a very King-esque way with some of the tropes!
But as for the Dark Tower … I’m reasonably certain that trying to do the whole series is doomed unless you do something like Rings of Power - an iron-clad funding contract for several full seasons. Cause, at a minimum, I’d figure 5 seasons of 8 one hour episodes to do it vaguely right, even with a lot of cuts.
And I’d probably mess with the order. Do the backstory we get spread across multiple books (Roland seeing his mother’s unfaithfulness, and the results in Wizard and Glass flashback) to get the non-fans involved in who Roland was before we fast forward to the Dark Tower novel.
Alternately, the graphic novel versions of the fall of the original ka-tet could be good as a mini-series of more limited scope - but likely only be accessible to existing fans.
I suspect he could get a pretty good commitment, but he’s said that he finds the wealth of material intimidating and that’s he’s having to build it “a brick at a time”, whatever that means.
I could see that, you want to do it well, but if you don’t plan the whole thing out ahead of time, it won’t work. You can’t just outline a seasons and then write one season at a time, you’d want to get the whole thing planned and written “A brick at a time” and THEN film it. Sure, you’ll need to make changes if things don’t go quite as planned, but there’s a LOT of material, and a lot of interlocking bits that you don’t want to be cramming in at the last moment.
And of course, it’ll take years to film, and if you want the right actors in the right roles, you’d also need to get a commitment on them for the full time. But a further discussion of the trials and tribulations involved (not to mention casting debates!) probably is worthy of it’s own thread.
So, back to Carrie.
Another issue with doing it right is finding the right tone on Carrie’s mother, who is herself (IIRC) a rape victim, but who then punishes her resulting daughter out of a lot of misplaced anger and self-hatred over her own feelings about the rape. Another pain point.
A last one is faith. In a day and age where the Christian Right is increasingly militant and dangerous, I’d be worried that putting in Carrie’s mother’s particularly violent brand of “Beating you in the name of God and the Greater Good” would be received. But leaving it out feels like a cop out - we may root for Carrie, despite of how horrible her actions are, because we know how badly she’s been treated at home and school.
Which brings us right back to the first pain point. I don’t think we want another movie that paints the person who kill almost all her schoolmates as being in any way justified, even as an anti-hero…
I think a good horror movie makes people uncomfortable. I think we all knew a kid like Carrie growing up. We viewed he or she as a pathetic creature for one reason or another and maybe joined in the bullying or just ignored it. We live in an era where a major political party has made it their mission to control women’s body and have already done a good deal of harm in that direction. That kind of fits in with Mrs. White’s views and how she controls Carrie.
It gets even more complicated because, as I remember it, one of the reasons Mrs. White feels so guilty is because she enjoyed it. Both Mr. and Mrs. White were repressed sexually and the only time they had marital relations was when Mr. White had been drinking. It’s been more than 25 years since I’ve read Carrie, so it’s possible I’m not remembering correctly.
It doesn’t look like Life of Chuck has a release date yet but am definitely looking forward to that one! Mike Flanagan really knows how to make a strong Stephen King film.
I don’t disagree with the above, just saying that it’s hard to do right without making a hero out of a murderer. Challenging, as I said - not impossible!
That’s more or less how I remembered it as well.
Again, TBC, I’m not saying it can’t be done, and done well, but it’s chock full of concepts, tropes, and problems that resonate MORE now that when it was new. Control of the female body, gender expectations in sexuality, biological education as regards to reproductive health, religious extremism, bullying in schools, violence in schools, abuse at home (physical and mental) and more that I’m probably not remembering having not seen it in schools.
All of those issues were real then, but they’re nigh daily front page news NOW.
I’m not saying that Mike Flanagan shouldn’t make the attempt, or be concerned about pleasing everyone, but it’s inviting everyone to go into the movie with an axe to grind. I can’t help but imagine nearly everyone is going to say “goes to far” or “doesn’t go far enough”.
So? No disrespect to you at all, @ParallelLines, but it’s a horror movie, and a very well known one at that. I think if he (MF) backs off, it will be fans of his and Stephen King who will have an axe to grind. You make some very good observations; in my opinion horror movies need not serve those. Kind of like how The Pit has different rules.
Just watched the original Carrie movie as part of a Halloween spooky-movie fest, and it reminded me of how much of the book got thrown away. Overall, he did a pretty decent job with it — it wasn’t just a bunch of jump-scares and a reduction of Carrie to Movie Monster.
But I’ve always thought I’d like to see someone else’s take on it, especially if they’d foreground the narrative with a fair amount of post-prom town horror, the loss of all those kids and the shock of what had just happened, the way it is in the book.
I really don’t recall too much of that from the book but it does sound like something that would be good on film. For me, the most chilling part of the original movie ending wasn’t the hand / jump scare, it was Sue in the hospital waking from that nightmare and we in the audience know she’s probably going to have that nightmare for the rest of her life.
I did. It was mostly just ok, but Judy Greer as Ms. Desjardin and Julianne Moore as Mrs. White are standouts.
