Of all the upcoming Stephen King movies and TV shows — and it’s no small number, with upwards of six new adaptations in 2025 along — perhaps the most left-field project is Mike Flanagan’s upcoming streaming series based on the prolific author’s first published novel, Carrie. Its unexpected nature stems not from its creator, as Flanagan already adapted Gerald’s Game for Netflix and even wowed King with his Doctor Sleep feature.
Rather, it’s that Carrie has a history of prior adaptations, with Brian De Palma’s 1978 hit arguably being the only necessary iteration of them all, boasting two Oscar nominations. But for Mike Flanagan to hand-pick that to be his third impending King adaptation behind the non-horror feature The Life of Chuck and his Dark Tower series, it can only mean he’s got the magic formula for updating Carrie White’s torment for today’s audiences with Amazon Prime subscriptions.
As a diehard fans of both Mike Flanagan and Stephen King, few things tickle my horror fancy like new details about their shared conquests, so I’ll be using both my telekinetic powers and my traditional reading and listening abilities to keep track of any new details that start dripping out of the Bucket Of Wet And Sticky Updates. It looks like pig blood, but it’s just information.
When Is Carrie's Release Date?
Even though it’s technically been six months or so since fans first learned about Mike Flanagan’s Carrie adaptation plans, progress hasn’t exactly been full-steam ahead behind the scenes just yet, as the filmmaker never just has one plate spinning at any given moment. He’s often bouncing from one project to the next, but with Life of Chuck set for its release, he’ll hopefully now have more time to focus on Carrie.
But given he’s also working on a Dark Tower TV show and a new cinematic chapter within the Exorcist franchise, it’s hard to know when production will kick off in earnest. But when it does, expect another nine months to a year of waiting before Margaret White will try to put us all in the closet.
The Carrie Streaming Series' Cast
After months of relative silence regarding the developing series, April 2025 is when Prime Video confirmed a series order for Carrie. Though not before unconfirmed Carrie casting reports suggested frequent Mike Flanagan collaborator Samantha Sloyan was in the running to play Margaret White, with Hereditary breakout actress Milly Shapiro rumored for the titular teen role. As wildly excited as I was to read those supposed options, neither seems to have panned out, with another actress rising up as the likeliest choice.
Summer H. Howell as Carrie White (Not Yet Confirmed)
Summer H. Howell made her on-brand acting debut in 2013’s Curse of Chucky, following it up with 2017’s Cult of Chucky, a role in my TV horror all-timer Channel Zero, and a string of low-budget horrors with titles like The Midnight Man, Harland Manor and Spirit in the Blood. And she was perhaps most recently seen by the most people within the cast of Netflix’s time-travel killer thriller Time Cut.
So from a genre-experience perspective, Howell is a natural enough choice to be reportedly in conversations for a deal in which she would portray the troubled teenager. At the time of writing, however, the report from Variety has yet to be fully confirmed by either Amazon MGM or Flanagan.
Siena Agudong as Sue Snell
On the flip side of things, young actress Siena Agudong’s career was cemented through fare for younger viewers, such as Nickelodeon’s Nicky, Ricky, Dicky & Dawn and Star Falls, the Disney Channel Original Movie Upside-Down Magic, and Netflix’s No Good Nick (with fellow former child stars Melissa Joan Hart and Sean Astin). She more recently embraced horror genre as young Billy Wesker in Netflix’s short-lived Resident Evil series, but also heads up Tubi’s romantic sports dramedy Sidelined: The QB and Me and its upcoming sequel.
As someone who portrays characters viewers are meant to side with and enjoy, Agudong is a solid choice to portray Sue Snell, a fellow classmate of who is initially drawn to joining others' bullying tactics, but eventually becomes something closer to an ally the misunderstood and mistreated Carrie.
Other Cast Members TBD
What Mike Flanagan's Carrie Will Be About
Here in the earliest days of the project's existence, we're still a ways away from learning all the intricacies of how Mike Flanagan & Co. will be adapting, expanding and updating the events from Stephen King's novel, which will likely be turning 52 years old before the series hits Prime Video. But for now, we do have this official series synopsis to go on, which more or less adheres to the core plotting of the novel and subsequent film:
A bold and timely reimagining of the story of misfit high-schooler Carrie White, who has spent her life in seclusion with her domineering mother. After her father’s sudden and untimely death, Carrie finds herself contending with the alien landscape of public High School, a bullying scandal that shatters her community, and the emergence of mysterious telekinetic powers.
That all tracks with what we know of the character to date, and given Flanagan's own religious upbringing and approach to depicting religion in his works, it can be assumed that Margaret White won't stray too far from the Bible with her domineering nature. But it's likely that the timely approach will allow the creative team to take liberties with other details, with technology almost necessarily being added in as another form of harmful bullying.
Here's what Mike Flanagan told CinemaBlend about his approach to returning to Carrie's story:
I can't spoil our approach to Carrie only to reassure people we are not retreading the same story. It is definitely a new approach to the material, and one that Stephen King is excited about which is also important to me. . . . And so when he went through the proposal that I put together for it, his reaction was, oh, this is actually very exciting to him. And then I said, ‘Okay, if he's excited, then we should do this.’ But otherwise I wouldn't have done it.
If it got the King of Horror's approval after he was initially hesitant to give his easy blessing, then I think Mike Flanagan's got something quality cooking.
Where To Stream Previous Carrie Adaptations
Stay tuned into the hive mind for more updates on Mike Flanagan's Carrie series, and always think twice and then a third time before you attempt to make fun of someone just because they look like they won't use telekinetic abilities to explode nearby buildings.
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