As the renewed effort of recent years to capitalize on the ever-growing trove of Stephen King stories for both big and small-screen projects continues, yet another of the author’s bestsellers has found its way into the film development pipeline, with the upcoming “The Dark Half.”
According to Deadline, writer-director Alex Ross Perry – fresh off one of 2019’s most underseen movies, “Her Smell” – has been tapped to helm “The Dark Half,” a 1989 novel that King wrote in response to his experiment of writing multiple books under the name of Richard Bachman. In the book, an author finds himself contending with a supernatural dark twin after discovering his works are more lucrative when written under a different name.
“The Dark Half” will be the first foray into outright horror for Perry, whose “Her Smell” is generating awards buzz for Elisabeth Moss’ turn as a destructive rocker. It will almost certainly also be his biggest project to date, having built a career dating back a decade with smaller budgets and character-driven stories. He has breakout potential with the new project, much in the same way that “Gerald’s Game” and “Doctor Sleep” has propelled Mike Flanagan to household-name status.
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While the film doesn’t have a set date for production or release yet, the announcement comes amid an increasingly crowded slate of King adaptations. There have been 13 major TV and film projects of King’s works since 2016 – there were 13 total in the previous decade – and upcoming ones include the likes of “The Stand,” “Firestarter,” and “Rose Madder.”
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This won’t be the first adaptation of “The Dark Half.” None other than George A. Romero wrote and directed a 1993 film version starring Timothy Hutton, Amy Madigan, and Michael Rooker. King’s novel, according to Deadline, “was only outsold in 1989 by Tom Clancy’s ‘Clear and Present Danger.’”
This is the second King project that Pery has found himself attached to. Earlier this year, the director was reportedly going to helm a film version of “The Rest Stop.” No word on whether or not that project is still in the cards.
