Stephen King adaptations are kind of like weather forecasts – not always reliable, but (mostly) always welcome. In recent months, news of Mike Flanagan’s upcoming Dark Tower series, Rob Savage’s terrifying-looking The Boogeyman movie, and Paul Greengrass’ Fairy Tale have come with the promise of sunny days ahead for fans of the Master of Horror. Now, as reported by Deadline, there’s another potential scorcher of a King adaptation on the horizon: Warner Bros have acquired the Maine-man’s crime thriller Billy Summers and are teaming up with J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot production company to bring it to our screens.
Stepping outside of King’s more familiar supernatural wheelhouse, Billy Summers is the noirish tale of a hitman forced to lead a double life in small-town America as he bides his time waiting to carry out the one-last-job that will get him out of the game. It wouldn’t be a spoiler to say that things don’t go entirely to plan, and before you know it you’re plunged headfirst into a world of high-octane action and double-crosses aplenty. Skewering Trump-era America and exposing the monstrosity of man while offering precision engineered genre thrills, it’s not hard to see why the book has been picked for the cinematic treatment.
The Last Samurai scribes Ed Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz are writing the screenplay for this one, originally conceived as a 10-part miniseries but now taking shape as a standalone feature. There’s no news yet though on whether Abrams’ involvement will extend to returning to the director’s hotseat for what would be his first film since 2019’s Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise Of Skywalker. It also remains to be seen whether the involvement of Leonardo DiCaprio’s production company Appian Way might pave the way for the Don’t Look Up star to make an appearance, either as Billy himself or as one of the several shady figures he brushes up against.
Whoever ends up in front of (and behind) the camera, the names attached so far suggest this King adaptation shouldn’t be, um, Overlook-ed.