The King of Horror only published his latest bestseller The Outsider less than three weeks ago, and someone has already swooped in to bring yet another Stephen King adaptation to television. In its early days, The Outsider is being developed for a limited TV series run, and some of the creative pieces are already in place.
Stephen King's The Outsider was optioned by production company Media Rights Capital (MRC), which also worked with King in finally bringing The Dark Tower to the big screen, for better or worse. (Still no big sign of that TV show, though.) MRC is planning for a ten-episode adaptation, with novelist and screenwriter Richard Price tapped to pen the pilot episode that will be used when shopping the project around, with no networks having been approached just yet. Price has worked on such acclaimed HBO hits as The Wire and The Night Of, and he's penned an array of features such as The Color of Money, Ransom and Clockers, which was based on his own novel. He's a good fit for The Outsider's monstrously offbeat crime tale.
While it's not clear if he'll take the gig or not, Stephen King does have the option to sign on to The Outsider as an executive producer. If he does, he'd join Jack Bender and Marty Bowen, both of whom worked on the stellar Mr. Mercedes adaptation for Audience Network. Bender, a celebrated TV director who has helmed episodes of everything from Lost to Game of Thrones to The Last Ship, will possibly take on directing duties for the pilot, according to Deadline.
For those who are unaware, The Outsider kicks off as a tale of potentially mistaken identity, taking place mostly within the fictional town of Flint City, Oklahoma (as opposed to Stephen King's highly frequented Maine locations). After Little League coach and all-around nice guy Terry Maitland is publicly arrested for the horrifyingly gruesome murder of a young boy, the town's initially cocksure law enforcement members find reasons to doubt what was thought to be an open-and-shut case. Reasons such as, "Terry has a witness-backed alibi." But neither Terry nor the detectives can imagine what's actually causing tragedies around Flint City.
Traditionally, Stephen King's novels and stories have been adapted for TV as short-form miniseries and TV movies, with big screen features usually being the alternative. But with Mr. Mercedes, developer David E. Kelley proved how well an extended episodic format works with the author's hefty tomes, and hopefully The Outsider can keep that process going, so that we might get to see even more new King projects popping up soon.
With The Outsider still in the development process, there's no sign of when the show might make it to a specific network. In the meantime, though, you can catch the anthology thriller Castle Rock on Hulu starting on Wednesday, July 25. And be sure to head to our summer premiere schedule to see what other new shows are coming soon.
