While busy with a number of projects for both the big and small screen, fans have come to adore Mike Flanagan’s adaptations of Stephen King’s bibliography but after much excitement and development of bringing Revival to the screen for Warner Bros., it appears that the project is now dead again.
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Sadly, it’s not. That project won’t be moving forward unfortunately. While REVIVAL and MIDNIGHT MASS both involve priests, MIDNIGHT MASS was conceived several years before REVIVAL was published, and similarities stop at the white collar. Really wish I could’ve done them both!
— Mike Flanagan (@flanaganfilm) January 4, 2021
Flanagan was attached to pen the script for the adaptation at Warner Bros. Pictures and had the option to also step into the director’s chair on the project. A film adaptation was previously in the works at Universal Pictures with Josh Boone set to write and direct the project while also working on his iteration of The Stand, but after lingering in development hell the rights were picked up by Warner Bros., while Boone’s version of the 1978 novel premiered on CBS All Access last month. Flanagan had told The Kingscast last July that he had completed the first draft of his screenplay, so it’s currently unknown as to why the project will no longer be moving forward with the Haunting of Hill House and Bly Manor showrunner at the helm.
Pick up your copy of the novel here!
Originally published in 2014, the novel centered on a relationship between a heroin-addicted musician and a dubious faith healer with a hidden agenda, with the minister obsessed with trying to find a way to communicate with his departed wife and child but accidentally taps into a Lovecraftian horror.
Flanagan was working with producing partner Trevor Macy on the adaptation of Revival, with Macy set to produce via the duo’s Intrepid Pictures, who recently acquired the rights to develop an adaptation of the 1994 horror novel The Midnight Club at Netflix in expanding Flangan’s working relationship with the streaming service.
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The 42-year-old writer/director previously dipped his toe into the world of King with the 2017 adaptation of his 1992 novel Gerald’s Game for Netflix, which received rave reviews from critics and audiences alike, and continued with the big screen adaptation of the 2013 sequel to The Shining, Doctor Sleep, which despite receiving strong reviews was considered a box office disappointment, grossing only $72.3 million on a $45 million budget, squashing follow-up plans.
