'Castle Rock' EPs Say Stephen King Stories Are Like 'Batman' at This Point

Even the most hardcore Stephen King fans don’t know too much about what to expect from Hulu’s Castle Rock. All we know so far is that executive producer J.J. Abrams spurred this King extravaganza into being at Hulu (with the maestro’s permission) in an attempt to unite the greater Kingverse.

Castle Rock will bring together an undisclosed number of King’s classic horror stories, including ‘Salem’s Lot, Needful Things, “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption,” Misery, IT, The Shining, and The Green Mile.

There’s no question that King’s stories are iconic, but Castle Rock executive producer Sam Shaw has compared King’s various works to a favorite character within the cultural zeitgeist with multiple recreations to his name: Batman.

According to a report by Flickering Myth published Monday, each season of Castle Rock will be based on a different horror story related to King’s favorite fictional town. Shaw describes Castle Rock as an “archaeological site” and “the worst luck town in the world,” plagued by two serial killers (maybe Mr. Mercedes or Beadie from “A Good Marriage”), a “homicidal rabid dog” (perhaps Cujo), and demonic trucks (Christine comes to mind).

Shaw went on to say:

We’ve come to a point in this culture where it’s sort of like comics book have become our Shakespeare. How many times on screen has the death of Bruce Wayne’s parents been enacted? How many times have we seen it and reimagined it and reinterpreted it to reflect the times? I think the same is true of Stephen King in a way. So many of us read those books as adolescents and were fucking scared out of our wits, and maybe it’s because they scarred us that they hold this purchase on our imagination, but it felt like it was a really exciting challenge to try to re-engage with that material, now in 2017, in the age of terror, in a moment when so much of our national identity crisis is caught up in questions about what scares us and what we do when we’re afraid and whether we behave rationally or irrationally and what we do to feel safe at night. It was really fun to dig into the material in a contemporary way.

As Shaw points out, King’s been around long enough that long-time fans have started reinterpreting his works and making new, innovative stories from them. The world saw a bit of a King revolution in 2017 between the King-based films and TV shows that premiered this year. Castle Rock, which is expected to premiere in 2018, seems to be acting as a kind of cap to this revolution, the ultimate King consolidation.

It already got a remake in this year’s blockbuster, a record-setting horror film that shattered expectations. Although, if the world gets another remake of It (besides the highly anticipated Part 2 of the story) within the next few years — a la the Dark Knight trilogy and DCEU Batman — horror fans might not be too happy.

Castle Rock Season 1 premieres on Hulu in 2018.

If you liked this article, check out this video on why an important monster from Stephen King’s book was left out of the movie It.