Stephen King fans, rejoice: “The Mist” is coming.
“But wait,” you’re probably saying while clutching your Carrie tote bag, “There’s already been a film based on The Mist, and it was awesome.”
Yes, it was. Directed by Frank Darabont, the 2007 version of The Mist was shockingly gory, but it also drew on a well-paced story while throwing in plenty of plot twists to delight Stephen King fans. And the ending…well, let’s just say that the film version of The Mist was better than the 1980 novella.
If you somehow missed that sci-fi/horror masterpiece, it’s about a small town that becomes enveloped in a supernatural mist (hence the name). Terrifying creatures inhabit the cloud, devouring anyone unlucky enough to get in their way.
In the novella and the film, a young boy and his father get trapped in a supermarket along with a few dozen other people. The survivors quickly form factions and turn on each other. It’s a paranoid nightmare, and it ranks as one of King’s greatest stories.
So, why are we re-visiting The Mist?
Well, Spike is producing a television series based on the monstrous world of the original novella. They’re billing it as a “re-imagination,” and not a reinvention.
“Internally, we talk about it as doing the Fargo approach, where the movie and the TV show is the same, but it’s different,” executive producer Christian
“It’s like a weird, twisted cousin to the original source material. Fans of the movie and of the book and of Mr. King’s work will certainly see elements from it…We also, in order to develop it for TV and turn it into an ongoing series, took our own little detours here and there.”
That helps to address our main concern with this new series: How can a short story provide enough material for an entire series? Presumably, we’ll meet a much wider cast of characters, and we doubt that the entire story will take place in a supermarket. That’s good news, as there will be plenty of opportunities to explore the world of the 2007 film, which was heavily influenced by the mythos of H.P. Lovecraft.
The stakes are pretty high, as this is an ambitious project for Spike.
The channel might be taking cues from Starz, which found a surprise hit in Ash vs. Evil Dead, a comedy horror series currently slated for a third season. With the success of other horror series such as Supernatural, American Horror Story, The Walking Dead, and Scream Queens, a bonafide Stephen King project probably seems like a safe bet.
Then again, horror shows are often expensive to produce, thanks to large budgets for CGI and practical effects, and shows like Penny Dreadful, Bates Motel, and Hannibal struggled to find audiences before eventually facing cancellation.
The Mist will hope to avoid that fate by drawing from established source material, and if the trailer is any indication, they’ll be spilling quite a bit of fake blood in the process.
Check out the trailer below; we’ll warn you that it’s extremely gory, and probably not safe for work, depending on where you work. It is, however, a lot of fun.
