Horror Stephen King's 'Salem's Lot

[Pfeiffer-Pfan]

Quite mixed all things concerned... I'll still happily watch this in the cinema.

 

[Pennywise]

What Salem’s Lot’s Director Took From His Experience Writing IT And IT Chapter Two For The New Stephen King Adaptation

Writer/director Gary Dauberman leaned into his past Stephen King experience.

www.cinemablend.com

In the aftermath of IT: Chapter Two’s blockbuster success, the filmmaker learned that Warner Bros. held the rights to King’s beloved novel about bloodsuckers, and there were plans to make a new adaptation as a TV series (what would have been the third small iteration of the story following Tobe Hooper’s 1979 miniseries and the 2004 version from Mikael Salomon). Having had the experience of making his directorial debut under his belt – 2019’s underrated Annabelle Comes Home – Dauberman convinced the studio to go in a different direction with the material:

IT comes out, they are big successes, everybody's looking around what to do next. I knew they were sitting on Salem's Lot and they were gonna make a TV series of it. And I thought, 'Let's do a movie!' And that's how that started. It was a pretty easy conversation.

was here where Dauberman’s experience making IT was helpful. In writing the scripts for the Andy Muschietti-directed duology, he gained an understanding that even the most devout Stephen King fans will be forgiving when it comes to material being cut or changed when being brought to a new medium. Said the filmmaker,

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IT was challenging because you're trying to whittle down all these great moments and you have to lose a lot of great moments in order to distill it down, even though it's just two movies. And I was so ****ing worried, dude, about like, 'Holy ****, people are gonna crucify me for not including this, or not including that' or whatever. And I found the audience to be really forgiving because they understand that the book is the book and the movie is the movie.

Leaning on his past experience, Gary Dauberman felt a reduced anxiety going into the making of Salem’s Lot – though he also stressed that he still holds the source material in the highest esteem:

That gave me, I felt, a little bit of a license, a little bit of a safety net of going like, 'Ok, well I'm not gonna be able to include everything that I want to in this book, but it seems like the audiences will allow for that.' So I felt a little less anxious when it came to having to cut certain moments or changing things for narrative purposes or whatever. Because I always get nervous changing his stuff. To me, it's biblical.

 

[Pennywise]

Salem's Lot: What Was Cut From the Original 3-Hour Version of the Stephen King Movie

Writer-director Gary Dauberman discusses the long journey of finding the new Salem's Lot, including major support from no less than Stephen King who fought to get the movie out into the world.

www.denofgeek.com

Dauberman reveals that his initial cut of the film, which included more of the town’s backstory, was significantly longer.

“My first cut was about three hours,” the filmmaker confirms. “There’s a lot left out. My first draft of the script is 180-odd pages or something because you’re trying to include everything. And a lot of it has to do with a lot of the secondary characters and stuff that I spoke about. So it was sad to see that stuff go, but it’s like a necessary evil.”

 

[blueharvest]

 

[Kane52630]

Saw it, it was definitely a movie... that was cut into pieces.

 

[Pennywise]

Saw it, it was definitely a movie... that was cut into pieces.

Makes sense, in one of the interviews I saw Dauberman said the original cut was 3 hrs.

Sucks to hear that!

 

[DarkKnight88]

You think after 2 years of delays and then just being dumped on streaming, might as well release whatever length you want.

Then again, more time doesn’t equal better either. This might be his preferred length.

 

[Kane52630]

It's also crazy because since it took so long for this to come out, you get to watch Homelanders son go back to puberty lol

 

[DarkKnight88]

At least Stephen King seems happy.

Did he ever share his thoughts on the Tobe Hooper version, or even the 2004 Rob Lowe miniseries?

 

[Sawyer]

This one… had its moments.

It just felt way too condensed for my liking. Like, it seemed as though we went from two corpses to the whole town being done for in no time at all, with little to suggest that’s how things were going. The change in ending didn’t do it for me either, but a part of me suspects that Midnight Mass might have forced that.

I wouldn’t go as far as saying it was unworthy of a theatrical release, but I’m not exactly mourning that lost opportunity either.

 

[Sawyer]

I am rather amused by how much of a badass they turned Mark Petrie into, though.

 

[Joe Von Zombie]

While not bad, this feels like another made for TV movie. I totally get why it was shelved.

 

[Frodo]

I liked it as an extremely condensed version of the story, but it doesn't touch the 1979 version.

It does feel like a TV or made for Cable movie , and not really a theatrical release .

Still though, the cast was pretty good for the most part.

I didn't like Straker's campy mustache twirling ,and Alfre Woodard's character just seemed off at times.


Other than that though , Lewis Pullman was great and really gave me Tom Holland vibes.

Jordan Preston Carter is a good little actor , and I look forward to seeing him in other things.

I've never seen Makenzie Leigh but , she's just utterly adorable .

I had low expectations , but , I'd give it a B-, if I had to grade it .

 

[Gothamsknight]

I very much enjoyed this. The visuals were great and I actually loved how the vamps looked too. I thought I was gonna dislike it based on some reactions, but nope. A solid 7/10.

 

[Stringer]

This was solid, had no problems getting through it, but it's forgettable. I have the urge to watch Doctor Sleep again after seeing this though.

 

[emc5466]

This was okay. It was better than I expected.

 

[Spider-Fan]

I started it last night, but then kept getting interrupted by calls and such and by time all that was over, I was too tired to finish it. Going to try and finish it tonight. I was about 40 mins in and so far it was fine

 

[Erik20]

I thought this was bad... It seems like they cut a lot of scenes with Mark and the other kids. He's an important part, but I barely know the character. It kind of feels like he should've been the (co) lead, but then someone decided the movie should mostly focus on Ben.

I totally get why this went straight to streaming. I had some fun with it... but more in a "so bad, it's good" kind of way. Apparently they cut over an hour of content, and you can really notice that.

Spoiler

Mark's friends and parents get killed, but it doesn't seem to bother him that much.. so I also didn't feel anything.

 

[Filmfreak]

I have neither seen this nor the 70s one. Should I stick to the old adaptation?

 

[The Joker]

I have neither seen this nor the 70s one. Should I stick to the old adaptation?

I haven't seen this latest one yet. But the old 70's one is definitely worth checking out.

 

[VictusMortuus]

This movie was not good. Feels incomplete and oddly edited and rushed. Does the town only have an hour’s worth of daylight? Mike Flanagan is the only person who should be adapting King stories.

 

[Deck Rickard]

I wonder how much these sh***y adaptations have ruined Stephen King as a brand. This one especially since it has a key connection to The Dark Tower and I hope that the negative response to it won’t (further) derail Mike Flanagan’s planned adaptation of that series. It’s bad enough that we’ve already had one awful Dark Tower movie, one failed TV pilot and one lousy remake of The Stand (which also has major connections). When you combine those factors with that Salem’s Lot prequel Chapelwait not generating much interest, the It films concluding with a total dud in part 2 (and I didn’t even think part 1 was very good), other recent turds like The Boogerman and Firesharter, I wonder how many more times people are going to give King’s works a go.

Of course, there are still plenty of projects in the works and some like The Life of Chuck and The Monkey look like they could be interesting. And King’s brand has mostly endured even through a zillion mediocre-to-bad adaptations throughout the 1990s, so maybe none of this matters.

 

[DarkKnight88]

I don’t think it really matters. The fact that he might be the only author still being adapted with his old and new material after 50 years says something.

AND because the adaptations that DO work are some of the best movies of all time, always included on some Best Of list.

Most authors just get ok adaptations.

 

[VictusMortuus]

His adaptations work when an exceptionally talented filmmaker makes it. Otherwise they fail 100% of the time. Flanagan, Darabont and Reiner all succeed because they understand what they’re adapting and respect it enough to know what they can change whilst staying true to the original story. This movie, Pet Sematary and other recent adaptations fail because the filmmakers don’t understand what makes the original stories work.

 

[Deck Rickard]

I still think it’s funny that (IMO) the best King movie and one of the greatest classics of all time (The Shining) is the one he hates. I never read the book so I can’t say how close the movie stuck to it but regardless, that movie is 100 times better than the crappy adaptations he recently shilled for.