The Film Adaptation of Stephen King's THE TALISMAN May Move Forward with HANDMAID'S TALE Director Mike Barker
I have been waiting to see Stephen King and Peter Straub’s fantasy horror novel The Talisman get a film adaption for years! I don’t understand why it hasn’t happened yet, but it looks like things are moving forward on it.
Steven Spielberg has had the film rights to the story since two years before the book was published in 1984, and it’s set up at Amblin Entertainment. The story follows a boy who enters a parallel world known as “the territories” on a mission to find a powerful talisman to save his mother from death.
Frank Marshall is producing the film, and it was previously reported that Josh Boone (New Mutants) was writing the script. Now we have learned from Collider that they have hired Handmaid’s Tale and Fargo director Mike Barker to helm the film and Chris Sparling (Buried) will be writing a new draft of the script.
In a 1996 interview, Peter Straub said that “Spielberg fell in love with the book before it was published and persuaded Universal to buy the film rights. [Stephen King and I] went to the Amblin offices on the Universal lot for a long meeting during which it became clear that Spielberg had a great understanding of the story and would have made a wonderful film of the book. However, the project got shelved.”
It’s too bad that it’s taken so long to get the movie made! At one point they were looking at developing it as a TV series, but that eventually fell apart as well. Last year, Spielberg talked about the film adaptation saying:
"I feel that in the very near future, that’s going to be our richest collaboration. Universal bought the book for me, so it wasn’t optioned. It was an outright sale of the book…I’ve owned the book since ’82, and I’m hoping to get this movie made in the next couple of years. I’m not committing to the project as a director, I’m just saying that it’s something that I’ve wanted to see come to theaters for the last 35 years."
Hopefully now after all these years the movie finally gets made! It’s be a shame if we had to wait much longer. Here’s the synopsis for The Talisman:
Jack Sawyer, twelve years old, is about to begin a most fantastic journey, an exalting, terrifying quest for the mystical Talisman—the only thing that can save Jack’s dying mother. But to reach his goal, Jack must make his way not only across the breadth of the United States but also through the wondrous and menacing parallel world of the Territories.
In the Territories, Jack finds another realm, where the air is so sweet and clear a man can smell a radish being pulled from the ground a mile away—and a life can be snuffed out instantly in the continuing struggle between good and evil. Here Jack discovers “Twinners,” reflections of the people he knows on earth—most notably Queen Laura, the Twinner of Jack’s own imperiled mother. As Jack “flips” between worlds, making his way westward toward the redemptive Talisman, a sequence of heart-stopping encounters challenges him at every step.
Are you happy to see the the project is actually taking steps forward?