Doctor Sleep director Mike Flanagan says he is no longer adapting Stephen King’s Revival. After successfully making King’s supposedly unadaptable novel Gerald’s Game into a highly praised Netflix film, Flanagan further proved his particular aptitude for bringing King’s stories to life by making a well-liked (at least by King himself) film out of the Shining sequel Doctor Sleep.
Of all directors who’ve become known for making movies out of King works, only Frank Darabont and Rob Reiner can claim a track record as good as or better than Flanagan’s has been thus far. That’s why fans were particularly excited when it was revealed that the director would be staying in the world of King by adapting the author’s book Revival, a modern-day Frankenstein tale about a preacher-turned-faith-healer who cures a heroin addict. Because this is a King story, the cured addict begins experiencing strange and tragic side effects.
Unfortunately for fans of King and Flanagan (and Lovecraftian modern takes on Frankenstein), that planned Revival adaptation looks like it’s not coming after all. Appearing on the Stand-focused podcast The Company of the Mad, Flanagan was talking about conversations he once had with Stand miniseries director Josh Boone, who previously was attached to Revival when Russell Crowe was supposed to star in it, when he gave the bad news (via ComicBook.com):
"We started emailing because I went on to eBay to buy a limited edition of Revival – a beautiful set of Revival, and Josh was selling it. I bought it, and he emailed me on eBay first when the transaction first started, like, 'Uhhh, hi.' 'Oh my god!' And so we got to go back and forth about Revival, being a project that Josh was doing first and then I also ended up not doing Revival. So we have that in common; we've both been through the ringer on that particular story."
Flanagan exiting Revival comes as somewhat unexpected news as he talked about the project not that long ago on a different podcast, expressing how much he was enjoying working on the “dark and cynical” story, while implying his take might be too dark for the film's company Intrepid Pictures. It’s worth noting that Flanagan doesn’t indicate whether the project is on the scrapheap entirely or if he’s simply not on it anymore. Obviously, this being the second time Revival has dropped a director doesn’t bode well for the future of the adaptation.
It’s indeed always somewhat surprising news whenever a planned King adaptation hits the skids, as it’s hard to think of a more solid brand in all of media than King’s. But could Flanagan’s exit from Revival indicate that the momentum is finally slowing for the King adaptation train? Or is this simply a case of a director leaving a project for the usual creative reasons, and not an indication of a larger cooling of interest in King? It will be interesting to see if more details are revealed about why Flanagan left, though of course such details often don’t come out until well after the fact. The good news for fans of King and Flanagan is that there are plenty of other King works out there besides Revival for the director to adapt should he choose to keep his streak alive.
Source: The Company of the Mad (via ComicBook.com)