In the world of Stephen King adaptations, TV projects have slowed down in recent years compared to features. While Constant Readers have seen the release of four movies since 2022, there haven’t been any new shows or miniseries on the air since the first season of Chapelwaite in the summer of 2021. It’s been a noticeable drought for King fans, but it’s one that will soon end. Welcome To Derry, the prequel to IT: Chapter One and IT: Chapter Two, is heading to Max in 2025, and now a small screen reworking of The Institute is finally moving forward.
After years of searching for a home, an adaptation of the 2019 Stephen King novel has gotten the greenlight for an eight-episode first season. To keep track of its progress through the various stages of production on the way to release, I’ve put together this handy guide. When is The Institute coming out? What filmmakers are involved? Who is starring? I’ll answer all of those questions and more to the best of my ability, and I’ll continue to make updates as more details about the show are revealed.
What Is The Institute Release Date?
I’d tell you to mark your calendars for the release of The Institute… but I sadly can’t do that at this stage. An official release date has not yet been announced. That being said, with the show set to go into production in late 2024 (more on that later), it’s not unreasonable to think that we will eventually see its MGM+ streaming premiere date set in 2025.
In addition to the aforementioned Welcome To Derry, another upcoming Stephen King adaptation targeting a 2025 release is Osgood Perkins’ The Monkey – but it’s also possible that the calendar year will also include Mike Flanagan’s The Life Of Chuck (which has completed production but hasn’t revealed distribution plans at the time of this article’s publication).
What The Institute Is About
From Carrie White in Carrie to Danny Torrance in The Shining to Charlie McGee in Firestarter, Stephen King has a long history of writing stories about young people with supernatural powers, and The Institute is one of his most recent additions to that particular category of his bibliography. The titular facility is a government-run institution that tracks young people with psychic abilities (specifically telepaths and telekinetics), and employees run experiments and tests to try and enhance those special skills.
The novel’s protagonist is 12-year-old Luke Ellis, who wakes up one morning in The Institute the night after home invaders abduct him and kill his parents. He’s able to glean some details about his circumstances from the cycling group of fellow inmates, but when he undergoes abusive treatment at the hands of his scientist captors and uses his ingenuity to uncover the truth behind lies that are being sold, he begins to formulate a plan for escape.
While all of this is happening, in what initially reads as a non-sequitur B-plot, a former police officer Tim Jamieson uproots his life in Florida and makes an impulsive decision to settle in a small town in South Carolina. He gets employment with the local cop shop doing night patrols, which proves to be a slow gig, but things get quite a bit more exciting when his life ends up intersecting with Luke Ellis’.
The Institute Cast Includes Mary-Louise Parker And Ben Barnes
When The Institute got the official green light, the announcement came with the additional news that the project already has two stars aboard. Ben Barnes is set to play Tim Jamieson, while Mary-Louise Parker is signed on to play Mrs. Sigsby, the director of The Institute and the story’s principal antagonist.
The show will mark the first time that Ben Barnes has starred in a Stephen King adaptation, but comes to the project with a long history of standout projects on his filmography. He first got a great deal of attention in 2008 playing the titular role in The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, and addition to starring in that film’s sequel (2010’s The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader), his notable credits include the HBO series Westworld and the Netflix shows The Punisher and Shadow And Bone.
Unlike Barnes, Mary-Louise Parker does have some Stephen King experience, as she had a key supporting role in the first season of the Audience series Mr. Mercedes starring Brendan Gleeson (The Institute is being developed by one of that show’s executive producers). Parker is best known for her time playing the lead in the long-running Showtime series Weeds, and she recently completed work on the period drama series The Gray House.
The Filmmakers Involved With The Institute
The Institute is a show that is being made with a lot of Stephen King adaptation experience working behind the camera. The series is being developed by producers Jack Bender and Benjamin Cavell, who have never worked together before but each have King credits on their resumes.
Jack Bender is the filmmaker who has previously worked with Mary-Louise Parker, as he was not only an executive producer on Mr. Mercedes, but also directed 23 of the show’s 30 episodes. He was also a producer/director on the CBS series adaptation of Under The Dome and has a producer credit on two episodes of the HBO show The Outsider. In addition to The Institute, Bender is also working to bring Stephen King’s latest novel Holly to the small screen.
Benjamin Cavell is best known for his work as a writer/producer on the FX series Justified and CBS’s Seal Team, but he is also credited as one of the creators of The Stand remake for Paramount+ that was released in 2020.
The Institute Series Has Been In The Works Since The Day Stephen King’s Book Was Released
Here’s a fun bit of trivia for you: Stephen King’s The Institute first arrived on the shelves on bookstores on September 10, 2019… and it was on that very same day that it was announced that an adaptation was in the works. Deadline reported that Spyglass Media Group had optioned the rights to the book with Jack Bender and David E. Kelley as the guiding forces behind the project (Kelley having been credited as the creator of Mr. Mercedes).
Five years later, it would appear that David E. Kelley is no longer involved and Benjamin Cavell has taken over his creative role in the development of The Institute.
The Institute Has A Series Order At MGM+ And Will Go Into Production In Fall 2024
When it does finally arrive, The Institute will be available to stream as an MGM+ original, joining a catalogue that also includes the Jack Bender-produced sci-fi/horror series FROM. A specific start of production date has not been announced, but cameras will start rolling before the end of 2024 (as noted earlier), and the show has made plans to film in Nova Scotia.
Stay tuned here on CinemaBlend for more updates about The Institute and all other Stephen King-related film and television projects. For a weekly fix of stories about the author and the adaptations of his works, check out my column The King Beat, which is published every Thursday.
