Back in 2014, it was reported that Mike Flanagan (Oculus, Absentia) was developing a movie adaptation of Stephen King’s 1992 suspense thriller Gerald’s Game. We’ve heard nothing about it since then, but the director has revealed to Rue Morgue that the project is still very much alive, and looks to be heading to Netflix.
“If you know the source material, you’ll know there are a lot of challenges inherent in that story,” states Flanagan. “Not so much the narrative challenges of how to adapt it; it took me 10 years of constantly thinking about the book to crack the cinematic version. But it’s a real challenge for financiers and distributors, who say, ‘Yeah, we love your work, we love Stephen King, but this story, this particular story? We don’t know how it works,’ without reshaping it to fit a much more conventional structure, which I did not want to do. And Netflix, because of how well Hush has done, said, ‘We’re really interested in this, and we’d like to do it the way you want to do it.’ And that eliminated the pressure of having to test-screen the movie and define the demographic that’s going to watch it—all of that stuff that typically comes into the conversation when you’re trying to figure out how to market a film for a wide theatrical release. It just cleared the table, so that I can make the movie I want to make. I’m hoping very much that we can get that movie up on its feet soon.”
Gerald’s Game follows a woman who accidentally kills her husband when handcuffed to a bed in a remote cabin, finding herself trapped and with little hope of rescue.
Flanagan’s next film, the horror prequel Ouija: Origin of Evil, is set for release next month, while he’s also completed the supernatural fantasy Before I Wake, although that was recently pulled from its planned September 9th release date.
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Originally published September 12, 2016. Updated April 16, 2018.
