If we learned anything at all from the Apple TV+ announcement, it's that the company's streaming service is coming right at Netflix's neck with all its high-profile projects and A-list talent attached. The latest, according to THR, is an eight-episode adaptation of Stephen King's novel Lisey's Story starring Oscar-winner Juliane Moore. King himself will write all eight episodes, with J.J. Abrams and his Bad Robot Productions label onboard to produce.
Lisey's Story is a bit of a horror-romance hybrid. The 2006 book follows a woman named Lisey Landon, the widow of a best-selling novelist who unravels strange, repressed memories of her husband two years after her death. It's an intriguing premise and Moore is a powerhouse, but King is what you could charitably call hit-or-miss when it comes to adapting his own work. The author wrote the screenplay for the original 1989 Pet Sematary film, but he also penned the script for the vastly inferior The Shining mini-series. (The less said about Maximum Overdrive, the better.)
At the very least, it's material King is enthusiastic about. He's cited Lisey's Story as his favorite of his own books, and told Variety in 2017 he'd love to see it adapted.
"'Lisey’s Story' is my favorite of the books and I would love to see that done, especially now that there’s a kind of openness on the streaming services on TV and even the cable networks. There’s more freedom to do stuff now and when you do a movie from a book, there’s this thing that I call the sitting on a suitcase syndrome. That is where you try to pack in all the clothes at once and the suitcase won’t close, so you just sit on it until it latches. And sometimes when it comes down on the baggage carousel, it busts open and your dirty laundry is everywhere. So it’s tough to take a book that is fully textured and has all the wheels turning and do it in two hours and 10 minutes. But as a TV show you have 10 hours, there’s always the possibility of doing something like “The Handmaid’s Tale,” which is extraordinary."
The report notes that a search for high-profile directors is currently underway.
