Stephen King’s Fairy Tale, which was once planned as a feature film from Jason Bourne director Paul Greengrass, will now be developed as a ten-episode TV series instead. Greengrass will co-write the scripts with J.H. Wyman, who will serve as showrunner. It will build on the screenplay that Greengrass had written for the feature film. King’s dark fantasy novel was originally in development with Universal, but it’s A24 who will team with Wyman and Greengrass to develop the series. Universal reportedly dropped Fairy Tale after they couldn’t find a way to make the 600-page epic into a single, satisfying film.
Wyman’s credits include Fringe, Almost Human and Debris. According to Deadline, who first reported the move, Greengrass is still expected to direct the show, although he does not yet have a deal in place officially. Peter Rice will be executive producer (with Greengrass, Wyman and King). Rice recently launched a producing career on Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night, a look at the earliest days of Saturday Night Live.
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“Needless to say, I’m a Paul Greengrass fan and think he’s a wonderful choice for this film,” King said back in 2022.
At the time, Greengrass added, “Fairy Tale is a work of genius. A classic adventure story and also a disturbing contemporary allegory.”
In Fairy Tale, a 17-year-old boy inherits the keys to a portal to another world, where good and evil are locked in an epic battle with consequences that can spill over into the boy’s world.
Deadline compares Fairy Tale to The Stand — a story so huge it will likely work better as a TV show than a film. In the story, they note that King takes his time to develop the lead characters — so much so that the main meat of the plot doesn’t get rolling for around 100 pages.
Greengrass, who started his career as a journalist and author, has alternated between dramas — often based on true stories, like Sunday Bloody Sunday and United 93 — and bigger franchise fare. At one point, he was attached to a film adaptation of Watchmen that got so close to reality it even had a website. He later said that he thought the Dark Knight trilogy did what he had hoped for his Watchmen movie better than he could have.
King, one of the best-selling and prolific authors in America, has helped shape horror for decades both in novels and onscreen. There have been dozens of adaptations of his books and short stories, ranging from Carrie and Pet Sematary to Stand By Me and The Shawshank Redemption.
Keep an eye on ComicBook for details on the TV adaptation of Fairy Tale.