The New Film Adaptation of Stephen King's SALEM'S LOT Might Be Skipping Theaters and Coming to Max
One movie I’ve actually been really excited about watching is the new film adaptation of Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot. I watched a trailer for this movie a couple of years ago, and it looked like it was going to be a great horror movie! But, for some reason, Warner Bros. has yet to release it.
The studio did initially develop the movie for a theatrical release, but after sitting over the shelf for over a year, it looks like the movie is going to be released on the streaming service Max instead. Variety reports, “A source with knowledge of the back-and-forth says the move is not a reflection of the film’s quality but is due to the fact that the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike has created a growing need for Max content. Salem’s Lot is one of a few Warner Bros. films deemed to make the jump.”
But a Warner Bros. spokesperson said: “No decision has been made about the film’s future distribution plans.” So, there is still a chance that the movie will get a theatrical release, which is what I’m for.
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 as of now unannounced role. James Wan is a producer on the film.
Source: Variety