MOVIE NEWS – Mike Flanagan has seemingly taken over from director Mick Garris as the new go-to for Stephen King adaptations, but he has recently reflected on a canceled adaptation of a King novel that remains his biggest regret. While Garris oversaw many King projects, including the ‘90s miniseries of The Stand and The Shining, 2011’s Bag of Bones, and even the King-penned Michael Jackson music video for Ghosts, Flanagan already has Gerald’s Game, Doctor Sleep, and the upcoming The Life of Chuck under his belt. Although he now seems to be set to finally deliver a faithful adaptation of The Dark Tower, one King project that got away from him was his adaptation of Revival.

During an appearance on his Echoes From Hill House: A Haunting Panel at FAN EXPO Canada (via ScreenRant), Flanagan was asked which lost project he still regrets not making. According to the director, that would be Revival, which was based on King’s 2014 novel of the same name. Citing the box office underperformance of Doctor Sleep – a travesty in itself – as part of the reason, he shared a little more insight into the project that will always be a “phantom limb” to him. He said:

“Absolutely. I wrote a script off of Revival that I love. Man, is it dark. We did the ending and, if you’ve read it, it is one of the bleakest most chilling endings that King’s ever done – including Pet Sematary. It’s dark, but man did I love that script. When people ask me what the phantom limb is, what the project that got away is, it’ll always be Revival. I had written it for Warner Brothers right after we had been shooting Doctor Sleep, but Doctor Sleep didn’t work in the box office. I’m enormously proud of the movie, and I hear from fans that it seems to grow, but it didn’t perform to the studio’s expectations. And so a lot of the projects that we had at Warner Brothers died as a result, and Revival was one of them.

I’ve mourned for it ever since, but I do not have the rights to it.

“It went away. And Steve, very wisely, doesn’t like to saddle the same filmmaker with more than one thing because it means that something’s not proceeding. There are other Stephen King properties that I am attached to that took precedence over that, and the choice was to pursue those or to try to get Revival going someplace else. We let it go, but I’ll always pine for that movie. Maybe it comes back around. You never know with these things.”

Mike Flanagan’s Recent Success Could Revive Revival

Although Flanagan had already found success on Netflix with The Haunting of Hill House before the release of Doctor Sleep, his star has been on the rise ever since. With several Netflix hits to his name, a new deal with Amazon, and a proven track record in being able to get the most from a King story, Flanagan could still get his wish to make Revival in the future.

Revival is a story with plenty of the usual King themes; addiction, loss, and what could be waiting for us on the other side. As Flanagan notes, the story, and in particular its ending, is probably one of the bleakest of any King novel – yes, easily as bleak as the movie version of The Mist. This could be another stumbling block for Revival’s chances of…well, revival, as studios are never keen on leaving things on a dark or even ambiguous note – something that Frank Darabont discovered when making The Shawshank Redemption. The real question is whether Flanagan would want to keep the story quite the same as when he originally wrote his script. In a recent Instagram post, the director noted that he does not plan on featuring many “bleak” endings in his movies going forward. He explained:

“When Kate and I got together, my outlook changed a lot. And as we had kids of our own, and the kids started growing up, it started to become more important for me. Someday they’re going to interrogate our work, right, like someday we’re going to be gone, and if they want to revisit us in an interesting way, they have all this work they can look at. And I never wanted them to come revisit those things and be left on a note of hopelessness. And, so, it’s become incredibly important to me that no matter how dark a story gets, there’s always hope and forgiveness and empathy at the end.”

However, there are many more avenues to shop such a project now, and with Flanagan’s Amazon deal just beginning, there is every chance he could get to make Revival as a Prime Video series or exclusive movie. Only time will tell, but one thing for certain is that the future of King adaptations is as bright as it has ever been.

Source: MovieWeb