Stephen King on Adapting Under the Dome and The Dark Tower
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- June 25, 2014
By Danny F. Santos (doddleNEWS)
Stephen King is no stranger to having his material adapted. Carrie, The Shining, and It are all huge films (and a miniseries) in their own right based on his classic novels… and King show’s no sign of stopping. Two more books due this year Mr. Mercedes (out now) and Revival (due in November), as well as the latest adaptation, Under the Dome, heads into season two.
Oh, did I mention he penned the season premiere?
King spoke with Buzzfeed and LA Times about writing an episode for a television show adapted from his own novel. In short, this is what drove him to write an episode:
I knew that George R.R. Martin had written a few episodes of Game of Thrones, and I was very jealous
The original novel’s innovative cover
He also notes the pitfalls of writing an episode of something adapted from your own work. When the rights of his material is optioned he has no direct involvement on it’s quality or how far it diverges from the source material, working on it brings a bit more liabilities:
It's a responsibility to be directly involved. I sometimes tell people that the ideal situation is, if the thing is a success you can say, 'It's based on my work.' If the thing is not a success, you can say, 'Well, I didn't have anything to do with it.' You're in great shape either way. But once you're involved, you're putting some of your own ego and some of your own track record, if you will, on the line.
As for the changes the series has made — notably, the fact that it takes place over more than a few weeks, King is actually very pleased. When the book was optioned, the producers wanted to stretch out the time frame to months or years, which was what he originally had planned:
When I was writing Under the Dome, my feeling was that it would stretch out over a period of months or even a year, and you would see a kind of reflection of what goes on in the world as resources run out and pollution increases and overpopulation becomes a problem. All the problems in our daily life, I would reflect in Chester's Mill over a period of time. But the book took over, and it ended up being three or four weeks.
Well, what about that other Stephen King adaptation that’s been in development for years? I’m talking of The Dark Tower series, of course, but unfortunately it seems that the project has been stalled:
I was very excited when Ron Howard got involved with that project. His original take on it was the best. He wanted to do the movies three tentpole movies interspersed with a number of TV series that covered Roland and his adventures as a young man. It was a brilliant concept, and I'm pretty sure it would have worked. [But] what sometimes happens in Hollywood and in filmmaking is, the financing fell apart, or the studio started to have second thoughts.
If you ask me, I think that King and Howard should take another page out of George R.R. Martin’s book and approach HBO or Showtime with a series instead.
Under the Dome premieres June 30 at 10pm EDT on CBS.
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