Stephen King Continues To Praise New SALEM'S LOT Movie and is Confused Why WB is Holding It Back
I saw the first trailer for Salem’s Lot about two years ago and I was super impressed by what I saw! This looks like an awesome and scary adaptation of Stephen King’s classic vampire story. It’s crazy to me that Warner Bros. hasn’t released this film yet! Even King is confused by what the studio is doing!
King has seen the movie, and he was impressed with it! In a recent post on X, the author once again shared his thoughts on the film and his confusion about why WB is holding it back. He said:
"Between you and me, Twitter, I've seen the new SALEM'S LOT and it's quite good. Old-school horror filmmaking: slow build, big payoff. Not sure why WB is holding it back; not like it's embarrassing, or anything. Who knows. I just write the f--king things."
King previously talked about the film several months ago, saying: "It feels like a horror movie version of slow-burn movies like THE GREAT ESCAPE. It builds very well. There are diversions from the book I don't agree with, but on the whole, faithful. Best scene: Danny Glick in the hospital, trying to claw down a blood bag. The Glick scene could have been directed by John Carpenter in his prime."
The author also said: “The Warner Bros remake of SALEM'S LOT, currently shelved, is muscular and involving. It has the feel of ‘Old Hollywood,’ when a film was given a chance to draw a breath before getting to business. When attention spans were longer, in other words.”
Hopefully, WB actually releases this movie soon, and when they do they better release it in theaters! Those people leading WB right now are nuts, though, so who knows what they’ll do. I wouldn’t be surprised if they scrapped it for a tax write-off already and they aren’t telling anyone.
Lewis Pullman (Bad Times at the El Royale, Top Gun: Maverick) stars in Salem’s Lot, and he will take on the role of author Ben Mears, “a man who returns to his childhood home of Jerusalem’s Lot in search of inspiration for his next book only to discover his hometown is being preyed upon by a vampire, leading him to band together with a ragtag group that will fight the evil presence.”
When previously talking about the movie, Pullman said: "It's a scary thing doing these remakes, man. It's like, this and [Top Gun: Maverick], there's such pressure, it's a hard concoction to conjure up to make it successful. But Gary Dauberman, the director, 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."
He added: "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."
The movie comes from director Gary Dauberman and also stars Jordan Preston Carter as Mark Petrie, Alfre Woodard as Dr. Cody, Makenzie Leigh as Susan Norton, John Benjamin Hickey as Father Callahan, and William Sadler in an unannounced role. James Wan is a producer of the film.