A favorite piece by Stephen King gets a new adaptation

Better late than never, right? The upcoming film adaptation of Stephen King’s 1975 horror novel Salem’s Lot has had a rough time on its way to the big screen. The film has been in the works since 2020 and is set to shoot in 2022. The film was originally scheduled to hit theaters in September of that year, but was pushed back to April 2023. The warning signs should have been obvious then, as Warner Bros., the studio behind the film, had also scheduled another horror film, Evil Dead Rise, for the same opening weekend. April 2023 came and went, and Salem’s Lot was still held back, but in October, with WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes preventing the production of new content, WB considered pulling the film from its Max streaming service. They decided against it at that moment, but by February 2024, the backlash from fans and King himself seemed to have reached its peak.

On X, formerly known as Twitter, King wrote: “Between you and me, Twitter, I watched the new movie ‘Salem’s Lot’ and it’s pretty good. Old school horror movies: slow build, big impact. I don’t know why WB is holding back; it’s not like it’s embarrassing or anything. Who knows. I just write the damn stuff.”

A month later, WB finally relented and announced that they would stream the film on Max later in the year, denying it the US theatrical window it had originally promised. Although the film will not be released in major theaters in America, American Cinematheque recently announced that the film will premiere this year on September 25th at their annual Beyond Fest in Los Angeles, giving it a chance to play on the big screen as planned.

Salem’s Lot stars Lewis Pullman, Alfre Woodard, Mackenzie Leigh, Bill Camp and John Benjamin Hickey. It is written and directed by Gary Dauberman, known as the writer of the Annabelle films, The Nun and co-adaptation of King’s It (2017) and It: Part 2 (2019). Like many of King’s stories, the film is set in the town of Jerusalem’s Lot in Maine and follows the author as he gathers a group of disparate townspeople to battle a vampire who is after all their blood. Like the original novel, this adaptation is set in the 1970s.

Watch the trailer below.