Stephen King’s 1992 novel Gerald’s Game was once thought to be unfilmable, but that was before Mike Flanagan (Oculus, Hush) came along. Flanagan adapted the suspense novel for Netflix, and now that production has wrapped, he’s been making the rounds to discuss one of the many King adaptations headed our way soon.
Speaking with Mangled Matters, Flanagan revealed that Stephen King was creatively involved in the Gerald’s Game adaptation…
We have been in touch – he’s been involved from the start, especially when it came to approvals and casting and such. We’ve also been in touch since he saw the movie. I was beyond excited that he responded to the film the way he did. It was probably the biggest fan-boy moment of my life.
As a lifelong King fan, I know how it feels to see an adaptation go south, and I was determined from the start that the film should honor his amazing novel. Adapting King is a difficult and fragile thing – we’ve all seen what happens when it goes wrong. As a Constant Reader, I never wanted Gerald’s Game to be in that pile. I wanted him to love the film, and I was elated when he did.
Adapting Gerald’s Game has been Flanagan’s passion since he was a teenager, and he feels comfortable in saying that he did right by King’s novel…
I don’t know if I’ve ever been as proud of a movie as I am of this one. In a lot of ways, my previous work has all been building up to this.
We don’t yet have a premiere date, but we’ll keep you posted.
In the Netflix film, “a woman accidentally kills her husband after being handcuffed to a bed, leaving her unable to free herself. As time passes and she realizes that rescue is an all but hopeless thought, she begins to slip into insanity, the voices in her head manifesting into visions.”
Flanagan and Jeff Howard adapted the novel.
The cast includes Carla Gugino, Henry Thomas, Bruce Greenwood, and Kate Siegel.
