Stephen King’s CELL Being Adapted into a 4 Hour Mini-Series
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- By Venkman
The last we heard about Stephen King’s Cell film adaptation, director Eli Roth walked away from the project to focus on his own ideas. The movie was to be produced by the Weinstein’s, and it looks like this is no longer the case. A writer by the name of John Harrison, is currently adapting the book into a four-hour miniseries based on Cell.
The news broke at Fangoria, which reports:
Having served as assistant director/composer on the King-scripted CREEPSHOW and helmed TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE: THE MOVIE (including an adaptation of the author’s “Cat from Hell”), Harrison considers CELL one of King’s best recent books, with opening chapters that will make an incredible first 30 minutes on screen. The filmmaker adds that he doesn’t see this as a zombie story so much as a VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED-esque chiller, and enjoys the fact that the infected populace possesses a hive mentality.
I thought Cell was awesome! I think It’s one of the best zombie stories ever told. I really enjoyed this book, and I thought it would make a fantastic movie. But to see that it might get turned into a four-hour mini-series is frikin sweet! So much more of the story can be told that way. I would hope it goes HBO, but if not I wouldn’t mind seeing it on TNT, because they put a lot of quality into there productions. I don’t see it going to the major network stations at all. Who know where it will end up, I only hope if this does all go through, it will be given a decent production. This is just such a cool story.
John Harrison most recently worked on the Clive Barker based film Book of Blood, which looks pretty good.
What do you think about Stephen King’s Cell? TV or Movie?
I am a huge fan of stephen king, but i feel like all of his books that are adapted into a miniseries fall seriously short of the actual story and the acting is typically sub-par. honestly to me, i felt like the book was a retooling of his other work and is probably one of my least favorite stories so i dont have very high expectations for this project
I've been saying for a while that TV shows and miniseries are far better for actual storytelling than films are. The additional time allows for increase detail from the novel to be included, making the adaptation less apt to gloss over or rework integral parts of the original.
I will say that I always felt that this novel was a zombiefied version of his FAR better book: The Stand. As much as I have to say that I enjoyed the read, I wouldn't say that it would be that great of a mini-series, since the ending is one that I would almost guarantee that no producer would allow.
Just so long as it stays out of Roth's hands, I'm happy. I was not at all pleased thinking it would be twisted beyond recognition.