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Stephen King’s poem “The Bone Church” to be adapted for TV

The next few years are shaping up to be pretty exciting for Stephen King fans after the rights to his narrative poem “The Bone Church,” were picked up by Cedar Park Entertainment. It looks like we’ll be seeing King’s name on our TVs or computer screens once again.

“If you want to hear, buy me another drink. …There were thirty-two of us went into that greensore, Thirty days in the green and only three who rose above it.”

Chris Long and David Ayer, founders of Cedar Park Entertainment, acquired the rights to Stephen King’s narrative poem “The Bone Church.” Long and Ayer plan to turn the eight-page poem into a TV series.

Chris Long is no stranger to King’s work. He was an executive producer on Audience Network’s adaptation of “Mr. Mercedes.” Long was programming chief at Audience for 18 years but left to form Cedar Park with Ayer.

David Ayer is best known for his work directing the DC comics film “Suicide Squad” as well as the hit Netflix movie “Bright.” After “Bright’s” success, Ayer signed a deal with Netflix to direct and write “Bright 2.”

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Stephen King wrote “The Bone Church” in the 1960s but didn’t publish it until 2009 in “Playboy Magazine.” The poem was later revised and republished in his 2015 short story collection “The Bazaar of Bad Dreams.”

“The Bone Church” is a tale of a drunk man telling a story about when he and 31 other explorers trekked into the jungle in search of the mythic Bone Church. Throughout the story, the narrator asks for more drinks and describes the deaths of every traveler except himself and two others. For the mathematically challenged, that’s 29 deaths.

As a poem, “The Bone Church,” is a different read but the style doesn’t take away from the creepy nature of the tale. This eight-page poem is guaranteed to give you chills. It is just one of 20 short stories in the “Bazaar of Bad Dreams” anthology. Other notable stories include:

“Ur” about a mysterious pink Kindle that contains books, newspapers, and other written works from other dimensions, and the future. This tale even has some connections to King’s magnum opus, “The Dark Tower.”
“Obits” is another good one about a young man who discovers he can kill people by writing their obituaries prematurely.
In “Mile 81” a young boy explores an abandoned rest stop and discovers a car that eats people. Sounds silly, I know, but it has little hints of King’s other car related novels, “Christine” and “From a Buick 8.”

Almost every story in “The Bazaar of Bad Dreams” is a hit and I wouldn’t be surprised if we see some others getting their own adaptations soon.

“The Bone Church” joins a long list of King stories set to hit TV screens or movies theaters:

“Castle Rock” debuts this summer.
“IT” part one was a huge success in September 2017. Part two begins filming this summer.
In January, Mike Flanagan, director of the adaptation of King’s novel “Gerald’s Game,” signed on to adapt “Doctor Sleep,” the sequel to King’s famous novel “The Shining.”
“Mr. Mercedes” season one was a huge hit. Season two began filming in February.
The rights to a re-adaptation of King’s famous novel (and my personal favorite) “Pet Sematary” were picked up by Paramount in December 2017. The new movie is slated for an April 19, 2019 release.
Last, but certainly not least, following the film’s flop in the summer of 2017, “The Dark Tower” will be rebooted for TV thanks to Amazon.

In case I lost you up there, here is a list of the novels and short stories. These should get you ready for the adaptations out currently and all the hopefully amazing movies and TV shows we will see in the coming years!

“The Bazaar of Bad Dreams” (2015) (495 pages) (Collection of short stories)
- “The Bone Church” (8 pages) (no release date for TV show yet)
“IT” (1986) (1138 pages) (TV movie 1990) (film 2017, part one. 2019, part two)
“Gerald’s Game” (1992) (332 pages) (film 2017)
“Mr Mercedes” (2014) (436 pages) (TV show 2017)
- “Finders Keepers” (2015) (431 pages) (season 2 of Mr. Mercedes set for 2019)
- “End of Watch” (2016) (429 pages)
“The Shining” (1977) (447 pages) (Film 1980) (TV movie 1997)
“Doctor Sleep” (2013) (529 pages) (presumable 2019 or 2020 release)
“Pet Sematary” (1983) (374 pages) (film 1989) (remake 2019)
“The Dark Tower” (series of 8 novels) (1981-2004) (over 4000 pages) (film 2017) (TV show coming soon on Amazon)

You should know by now what I am about to say: read the books before seeing the movies or watching the shows! I know there is a lot of material listed there, but you can do it. Some were listed in previous posts anyway, so you should have a head start… right?

Amazon Saves The Day; Purchases Rights To “The Dark Tower”

Amazon has purchased the rights to “The Dark Tower” series; planning a complete reboot of Stephen King’s Mangum Opus.

“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.”

Amazon has purchased the rights to Stephen King’s expansive sci-fi/fantasy/western series, “The Dark Tower.” The intention is to create a TV series. This is great news to every King fan out there because the 2017 film adaptation just didn’t cut it.

After production finished for last summer’s film, starring Idris Elba as Roland Deschain, the last Gunslinger of Gilead, and Matthew McConaughey as The Man in Black, Roland’s nemesis, director Nikolaj Arcel announced he would be working on a TV series related to the backstory of Roland.

The film more or less tanked. It was a sad excuse for an adaptation and the 90-minute run-time didn’t nearly cover enough of the material from a SEVEN book series. Due to the films failure, plans for the series were dropped. In comes Amazon to the rescue!

The new show, rumored to be helmed by “Walking Dead” executive producer Glen Mazzara, is supposedly going to be a complete reboot of the series. HALLELUJAH!

“The Dark Tower” is Stephen King’s magnum opus. It is a seven book series which also includes an eighth book that is more of a side story.

“Magnum Opus: a large and important work of art, music, or literature, especially one regarded as the most important work of an artist or writer.”

What is “The Dark Tower?” Here’s a short synopsis: “The Dark Tower” series tells the tale of Roland’s search for the Dark Tower, a tower that stands at the center of the world, the axis from which everything else revolves around.

Roland’s world is dying, and he believes if he reaches the Tower he can fix it. Of course, there are people attempting to stop him; people who want to see the world destroyed; people like The Man in Black and the Crimson King.

Throughout his journey, Roland makes new friends; Eddie Dean, Susannah, Jake Chambers, Oy (a billy bumbler which is a sort of fox/raccoon-like creature). Together, they form a Ka-tet (definitions of all the weird words used are at the bottom).

Roland and his Ka-tet face many hardships on their journey to the Tower. They save lives, shoot bad-guys and travel between dimensions through doorways or portals. The series is a roller coaster from start to finish.

The seven book series, written from 1981 to 2004, contains over 4,000 pages of material and even expands into King’s other works. “The Dark Tower” is considered the center of King’s storybook universe.

Below, is a rudimentary diagram of how his other novels and stories connect to “The Dark Tower.” There are also more possible connections that haven’t been confirmed or denied yet.

If you have read previous posts, you may notice some familiar titles such as “One for the Road,” and a lot, if not all, of the Castle Rock stories.

Listed here are all “The Dark Tower” novels in order, but the diagram above features 19 other novels, 4 novellas and 8 short stories that have ties to the series. There are also 16 comics for the “The Dark Tower.” “Gwendy’s Button Box,” a novella by Stephen King and Richard Chizmar, was written after the diagram was created, but it also contains possible ties to “The Dark Tower.”

“The Dark Tower 1: The Gunslinger” (1981) (231 pages)
“The Dark Tower 2: The Drawing of the Three” (1987) (399 pages)
“The Dark Tower 3: The Wastelands” (1991) (509 pages)
“The Dark Tower 4: Wizard and Glass” (1997) (781 pages) This novel is mostly about Roland’s past
“The Dark Tower 5: Wolves of the Calla” (2003) (709 pages)
“The Dark Tower 6: Song of Susannah” (2004) (411 pages)
“The Dark Tower 7: The Dark Tower” (2004) (830 pages)
“The Wind Through the Keyhole: A Dark Tower Novel” (2012) (307 pages) This novel is about Roland’s past and a fairy tale his mother used to tell him as a child.

As mentioned before, there are other novels and stories that may have connections to the series, but they have yet to be confirmed or maybe no one has noticed them yet. That’s on you to read, discover and theorize on your own (or find a group of King fans to nerd out with… trust me it’s fun).

“The Dark Tower” contains a plethora of strange words, phrases and places, so, as promised, here’s an extremely small list of definitions:

Ka: life force, consciousness, duty, destiny, fate
Ka-tet: a group of people summoned together by Ka
Thankee: thank you
Sai: sir or madam
Gilead: fabled city where Roland grew up, located in Mid-World
Mid-World: one of the many worlds or levels of the Tower. It is the world Roland inhabits
The Dark Tower: the center of all creation

As always, read the books before the show! Don’t even bother with the movie. The series is truly incredible, and the connections are endless. Once you get started, you will never want to put these books, or any King books, down. Enjoy, and as always feel free to leave comments and don’t forget to follow!

Buckle Up: “Mr. Mercedes” Season Two Begins Filming

Filming for the second season of the “Mr. Mercedes” series began on the 12th, so get your copies of Stephen King’s “Bill Hodges Trilogy” now.

Season two of the hit TV series “Mr. Mercedes” started filming on February 12, in Charleston, South Carolina. “Mr. Mercedes” is based on Stephen King’s murder mystery and suspense thriller series known as the “Bill Hodges Trilogy.”

Season one of “Mr. Mercedes” was adapted from the first novel (obviously) in the series, titled (you guessed it) “Mr. Mercedes.” The 10-episode series aired in 2017 on the Audience network, owned by AT&T.

Audience? Yes, I was confused at first too, but I found it and it was totally worth it! The show is not only one of the most accurate adaptations of a King novel, but everything about it was superb.

“Mr. Mercedes” garnered an 8.1/10 rating on IMDb and an 85% on Rotten Tomatoes. Those are both really good numbers in case you didn’t know.

The show is directed by Jack Bender who has worked on the shows “Lost” and “Game of Thrones” (yeah nothing big). David E. Kelley adapted the story for television, and Stephen King himself co-produced the show with Kelley and Bender. King even makes a little cameo in one episode.

“Mr. Mercedes” is a dark and twisted thrill ride. A psychopath drives a stolen Mercedes through a group of people waiting in line to get jobs, killing 8 of them and injuring countless others.

Retired Detective Bill Hodges played by the one and only Brendan Gleeson, decides to come out of retirement when he receives threatening emails from the “Mercedes Killer” aka Brady Hartsfield, played by Harry Treadaway. The emails contain the wacky smiley faces you have seen and will see.

Brady, clearly mentally unstable, but extremely smart, taunts Hodges into a manhunt. Hodges enlists the help of his young neighbor Jerome Robinson, played by Jharrel Jerome, and Holly Gibney, played by Justine Lupe. Holly is a relative of the women whose Mercedes Brady stole. Together, the three gather clues and attempt to find Brady before he can kill again.

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Book two of the Bill Hodges Trilogy, presumably what season 2 of the show will be based on, is titled “Finders Keepers.”

In “Finders Keepers,” another psychopath (see a theme?) named Morris Bellamy, kills a famous author he was obsessed with, (a little reminiscent of King’s famous novel and movie, “Misery.”), and steals money from the authors safe as well as notebooks of unpublished novels. Bellamy buries the money and notebooks in a chest underneath a tree but before he can reap the rewards of his heist, he gets arrested and placed in jail for a different crime.

Years later, Pete Saubers finds Bellamy’s chest and uses the money to help his family recover from the financial hole they were in after Pete’s father was injured during the Mercedes Massacre (from “Mr. Mercedes”).

Bellamy gets released from jail and returns to dig up his chest, only to find it missing (Obviously he’s not happy). Meanwhile, Hodges, Holly and Jerome have started a private investigation company called Finders Keepers. They are called upon to help protect Pete and his family from Morris, who wants the contents of his chest back.

As I said before, filming for season two just started, so it is not yet known who will portray the new characters. Gleeson, Jerome, Lupe, and Treadaway are all set to reprise their roles, and Bender, Kelley and King are all producing/directing/writing season two as well.

Book three, and the final novel of the “Bill Hodges Trilogy” is called “End Of Watch,” (maybe, hopefully, there is a season three in our future?).

In the previous two novels, King surprised fans with a lack of anything supernatural, opting instead to thrill the readers with suspense, amazing and deranged characters, and intense storytelling.

In “End Of Watch,” however, we see King comfortably and seamlessly insert supernatural aspects and marry them with what worked for the previous novels. Brady Hartsfield has developed the ability to transfer his consciousness into other humans and electronic objects.

The members of Finders Keepers; Hodges, Holly and Jerome, are back and investigating a series of suicides around the (fictional) city of Bridgton, Ohio (where the previous novels also took place). The trail leads the three to a final showdown that has readers on the edge of their seats throughout the entire novel.

The final novel in the “Bill Hodges Trilogy” has a different feel from the first two, because of the supernatural aspects, but King is still able to keep it as intense and believable as he did with the first two… and book three may even bring a few tears out of you.

Anyway, before I get into too many spoilers, read the books! There are only three, and they aren’t even big! You will tear through them, I promise. After you read them, watch Mr. Mercedes season one and then get yourself ready for season two, and hopefully season three in the future! Remember, “The books are almost always better than the movie.” Or in this case, show.