Top Gun: Maverick star Lewis Pullman has been discussing how cautious director Gary Dauberman is of "doing Stephen King dirty" with his adaptation of Salem's Lot. In a new interview with ComicBook.com, Pullman discussed the upcoming adaptation, which currently has no scheduled release date after Warner Bros. adjusted their release calendar, but is highly anticipated by many King fans.
Pullman, who will star as Ben Mears in the new adaptation, discussed the lengths that Dauberman went to in order to do justice to King's novel. As a loyal and dedicated fan, he made sure he wouldn't do "Stephen dirty." He said, "Dauberman is really keen on doing justice to the book. But also, the previous adaptation was a two-parter, because it’s such a hefty book and there are so many different moving parts and so many characters. So there are some parts where Gary had to press and find what was really at the heart of the movie to keep in, but for the most part, he’s really true to the book and keeping a lot of the original dialogue in there. He’s a Stephen King hound dog so he doesn’t wanna do Stephen dirty.”
The actor adds, “so, I think it’s in good hands, Gary’s a really smart guy who has a keen eye for things. I think, not just lean on the jump scares, but lean on the more conceptual and visual things that, rather than a shock that fades out of your body in the next five minutes, something that’s more visual, like an imprint that burnt into your retinas as a disturbing image that you’ll wake up in the middle of the night that you can’t shake out of your head.”
Salem's Lot tells the story of author Ben Mears, who moves home to the titular town, only to find that it has become infested with vampires. Directed by Tobe Hooper, the 1979 adaptation was a two-part miniseries, and starred David Soul as Mears. As Hooper is considered one of the greatest horror directors in Hollywood history — also having directed Poltergeist and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre — Dauberman's interpretation of the story will have a lot to live up to.
Not a stranger to adapting King stories to the big screen, Dauberman helped to write both It and It Chapter 2. Alongside Pullman, the cast is set to include Makenzie Leigh, Alfre Woodard and John Benjamin Hickey.
Dauberman's Salem's Lot currently does not have a release date. Check out the trailer for the original miniseries below, and stay tuned to Collider for more updates.