The Master of Horror has been making some big forays into television lately, with such Stephen King-inspired fare as “Under the Dome”, last year’s James Franco miniseries “11/22/63”, an upcoming anthology series exec produced by J.J. Abrams and “Haven,” which recently wrapped up its five-season run.
Next comes “The Mist”, based on King’s 1980 novella, set to air on Spike in June.
As on the page — and in the 2007 fright flick based on the novella — the story surrounds a mysterious mist that rolls into a small town, bringing with it all manner of strange and deadly otherworldly creatures.
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“I wanted to be respectful to the source material, but my feeling was there was already a great adaptation out there by Frank Darabont,” series creator Christian Torpe tells Entertainment Weekly of why he’s veering away from the original for the new series.
“The novella is 200 pages and one location, and we needed to change that to make an ongoing series. But we wanted to remain faithful to the heart of the story,” he says.
Instead of being set entirely within the local grocery store, the series features people trapped in several locales. “We establish different little pressure cookers under the influence of whoever the leader would be in those locations,” says Torpe. “Each of them come up with different theories or beliefs about what’s going on. Eventually, the story lines will dovetail and turn into conflicts.”
As Torpe notes, the series will take a different direction than both the novella and the movie, although there may be some crossover. “It’s a weird cousin to the original material,” he says. “It has a constant ebb and flow communication with the novella. But who knows? Maybe some of the original characters will make a cameo at some point.”
“The Mist” debuts on June 22.
