The works of horrormeister Stephen King have remained fertile ground for those looking to bring an established property to film or television for many decades. And, with the wealth of material that producers have to work with, it's not unusual for them to stumble on a story of King's which either hasn't already been adapted at all, or at least hasn't been on screen more than once. Such is the case with a potential new drama, which currently has the working title of Revelations, and has been put into development at The CW.
If you consider yourself to be a Stephen King fan and Revelations doesn't quite sound familiar to you, that may be because it's based on one of his uncollected short stories, The Revelations of 'Becka Paulson, which debuted in print in the July / August 1984 issue of Rolling Stone magazine. According to Deadline, the possible series is being set up as a one hour drama, and will follow the titular character from King's story after she's accidentally shot herself in the head with a nail gun and begun speaking with Jesus.
This Jesus is simply not in the mood for a lot of heavy lifting when it comes to humanity, though, and he's chosen the excessively cheerful woman to act as the "chosen one" to stop the upcoming apocalypse. To take on this huge task, she'll have to prove that our "deeply backward" planet and its people are actually worth saving, and begin that work in her eccentric midwestern hometown.
Revelations comes from Maisie Culver (Last Man Standing), Katie Lovejoy (To All the Boys: Always and Forever, Lara Jean), and Warner Bros. TV. Culver will write, along with serving as co-executive producer, while Lovejoy will act as executive producer.
While this may be the first time you've heard of The Revelations of 'Becka Paulson, Stephen King's story actually has been on the small screen before. It was used as the basis for an episode of The Outer Limits, which aired in the summer of 1997, and starred Catherine O'Hara, Steven Weber (who also directed the episode) and several others. Now, since Stephen King's writing is the backbone of Revelations, you shouldn't be surprised that the original story was a bit darker than what it sounds like will be coming from The CW series, should it make it to air.
In that original story, Becka's injury leads her to hallucinate conversations with a photo of Jesus, who gives her instructions on how to kill her husband via electrocution by way of their television set. Even though the original story was never put into a volume of short stories, Becka and some of the other characters appear in King's 1987 novel The Tommyknockers, where she basically kills her husband in the same way, but with alien interference leading to her hallucinations.
That entire explanation was so Stephen King that the only thing missing is a murderous supernatural clown, so I'm really very glad that it sounds like Revelations is going in a slightly different direction than the original story did. I like that, for the proposed series, it sounds like Becca (as her name will be spelled for the show) will truly be communicating with Jesus instead of just hallucinating, which is a nice touch. Plus, she's going to be given a job which will, hopefully, end up more positively than her setting out to kill someone, so even though it's being billed as a drama, it should be less of a downer to watch.
Obviously, Revelations is still in the very early stages, so we don't know right now if it will make it to primetime on The CW or how many episodes it might have should it be picked up to series. But, stay tuned to CinemaBlend and we'll have the latest on this and everything we know is coming to the small screen this fall!
