As All Hallow’s Eve creeps closer to us, it seems somehow fitting that there are several Stephen King adaptations crawling towards the screen. Sinister** director Scott Derrickson is working up The Breathing Method and now Peter Cornwell has Frances O’Connor lined up to star in Mercy.
If that title has you flipping through your collected King books wondering where it appeared, relax. The original short story is actually called Gramma. It first spooked people in the pages of a 1984 Weirdbook magazine before it was collected in the 1985 selection Skeleton Key.
O’Connor will play a mother whose two young sons discover that their ill grandmother, Mercy, is a witch. Matt Greenberg, a King-scripting veteran after working on 1408, wrote the adaptation. It’s not the first time that Gramma has been on screens: it was made into an episode of the 1985 update of The Twilight Zone with a script by no less a talent than Harlan Ellison.
Like The Breathing Method, this is being shepherded by Paranormal Activity producer Jason Blum’s Blumhouse Productions, with backing this time from Universal.
O’Connor was last seen in **The Hunter **alongside Willem Dafoe. She has a role in Billy Bob Thornton’s latest directorial gig, Jayne Mansfield’s Car and in Emanuel And The Truth About Fishes. Cornwell, meanwhile, has some horror cred built up: he directed 2009’s The Haunting In Connecticut.