Here’s How ‘The Mist’ TV Show Will Connect to Stephen King’s Book
It's like a 'weird cousin' to the novel.
Spike’s TV adaptation of Stephen King’s horror novel The Mist premieres in less than a month, and it looks like it’s going to be a sex-filled, gory doozy of an experience. The book already received a pretty accurate film adaptation in 2007; this series aims to try something new and deviate more from the source. In a featurette released by the network on Thursday, creator Christian Torpe calls the series a “weird cousin” to the original book and hints at some of the differences between them.
Like King’s novel, the plot will follow the inhabitants of a city that is suddenly plagued by a mysterious, horrors-filled mist. But beyond that, says Torpe, “We had to change a lot of things.”
The show will take place in multiple locations, including a shopping mall and a church, whereas the book occurs mainly in a grocery store. Conflicts will arise between the people who are gathered in every place; to flesh out these frictions, Torpe added more character details and development.
Actor Morgan Spector, who plays Kevin Copeland, explains Torpe’s approach: “He’s taken all the weird little idiosyncratic characters and the old, tense relationships between people who have known each other their whole lives in a small town, cramming them all together in a high-pressure environment, and seeing what fissures emerge and how people crack.”
Torpe indicated that the series will further develop the book’s “Arrowhead mythology” and involve the Mrs. Carmody character “in a new incarnation.”
“It’s like a weird cousin to the movie, or to the original story,” he said. “It’s sort of its own beast.”
Police face encroaching mist in a trailer for 'The Mist.'
At the same time, despite these differences, Torpe says that he and his team have made every effort to be “incredibly respectful of the source material.” He mentioned that there will be “little references from the book and the movie throughout the story.”
No word on whether they’ll adopt the extremely dark ending that was the film’s major departure from the book. Here’s hoping they go for something a bit less tortuous.
The Mist will premiere on Spike on Thursday, June 22. Watch the “Reimagining The Mist” featurette below.
