A Roving Meditation on Small Town American Life
The most interesting novel Stephen King ever wrote, ‘Salem’s Lot, a meditation on the secrets and the ecology of small towns in America, is being adapted once more, this time by Epix Productions.
From the trades:
Epix has given a 10-episode straight-to-series order to Jerusalem’s Lot, a drama based on the short story by Stephen King… Jerusalem’s Lot hails from writers Peter and Jason Filardi and producer Donald De Line (Ready Player One, Wayward Pines). Production is slated to begin in May 2020 in Halifax, Nova Scotia with an eye towards a fall 2020 premiere.
Would you like to know more?
Well, Brody Won’t Be Playing Father Callahan
Adrien Brody, one of the youngest people to ever win an Oscar for his role in The Pianist and an actor who hangs around Wes Anderson all the time, is set to star, but not in the role you would think.
From the trades, yet again:
Written by the Filardi brothers, Jerusalem’s Lot the series is set in the 1850s. It follows Captain Charles Boone (Brody), who relocates his family of three children to his ancestral home in the small, seemingly sleepy town of Preacher’s Corners, Maine after his wife dies at sea. However, Charles will soon have to confront the secrets of his family’s sordid history and fight to end the darkness that has plagued the Boones for generations.
Note they didn’t mention vampires, Ben Mears, or Father Callahan.
What Are We To Make of All of This?
As a television show, the novel ‘Salem’s Lot has been adapted before, first in 1979 and then again in 2004 by TNT as a two-part mini-series, also developed and written by Filardi and Stephen King.
The most interesting part of the novel is the story of Father Callahan, and how he loses his faith in the face of the unremitting evil of the vampire Barlow.
And then, he gets on a bus and winds up on the edge of Thunderclap and meets Roland’s band of gunslingers in The Dark Tower: Wolves of The Calla.
It would not be a surprise if this mini-series acts as a sort of “prequel” to the presence of Jerusalem’s Lot as a bus stop in the Hulu series Castle Rock, and sets up some narrative pieces that will be explored in the upcoming movie, from James Wan.
