The Tommyknockers - the latest movie adaptation of a Stephen King book - has hired Fantastic Four co-writer Jeremy Slater to pen the script. While he'll probably never approach the frequency of public domain stories like Dracula, Frankenstein or Shakespeare's various plays, King is definitely up there when it comes to authors whose works are most commonly adapted. The point has even been reached now where King stories that were adapted before are often being adapted again, as seen by the three screen adaptations of Carrie, or the film and TV adaptations of IT and The Shining.

The latest King book to gear up for a second adaptation is The Tommyknockers, a 1987 tale of aliens invading and slowly assimilating a small town called Haven, Maine. The Tommyknockers is far from being one of King's most popular works among fans, and has even been openly bashed by the author himself. Much like King's hilariously bad lone directorial effort - 1986's Maximum Overdrive - The Tommyknockers was a product of a time when he was struggling to escape the grip of drug addiction, and his output suffered. Of course, the Stephen King name equals big bucks regardless, so Hollywood is happy to give the material another shot.

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Prolific producer and director James Wan (Aquaman, The Conjuring) is producing the new Tommyknockers via his Atomic Monster company, with Universal Pictures having won a bidding war to distribute the film back in April. Now, The Wrap reports that Jeremy Slater has been signed on to pen the script for the re-adaptation. Slater co-wrote - alongside Simon Kinberg and Josh Trank - Fox's disastrous 2015 attempt to reboot the Fantastic Four, as well as created Fox's TV series take on The Exorcist, which lasted two seasons. Update: Jeremy Slater revealed on Twitter that writing a movie adaptation of a Stephen King novel has always been a dream of his; it's actually one of the three dream projects on his bucket list.

The Tommyknockers was one of several Stephen King stories to get turned into a TV miniseries in the 1990s, along with IT, The Shining, The Stand, and The Langoliers. The miniseries starred Jimmy Smits as Jim "Gard" Gardner, an alcoholic who finds himself one of the only people in town able to resist the malevolent influence of the aliens. Marg Helgenberger played his girlfriend Roberta "Bobbi" Anderson, who ends up becoming the defacto leader of the alien-controlled residents. Reviews weren't very kind, but ratings were terrific, as usual.

While many might be tempted to give Slater flack for having worked on Fantastic Four, it's important to remember that what he, Kinberg, and Trank wrote was quite far from what ultimately ended up on theater screens, as Fox famously meddled incessantly with the final product. More recently, Slater's work as showrunner on the short-lived but positively reviewed Exorcist series illustrates how good he can be when left to his own devices, and that he knows how to write effective horror. Whether that means he can spin gold out of one of King's most mediocre books remains to be seen.

More: 15 Things Stranger Things Stole From Stephen King's IT

Source: The Wrap