Home Entertainment Stephen King's UNDER THE DOME finds a new home, recruits Brian K Vaughn

Stephen King's UNDER THE DOME finds a new home, recruits Brian K Vaughn

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Because shoving an entire city underneath a mysterious dome hasn’t been done before, right Simpsons family? Jokes aside, the Stephen King novel is less jaundiced people and their wacky shenanigans, and more tense situations that explores the ramifications of such an act.

The project has been in development limbo for a while now, but it looks like production is finally moving forward, as Brian K Vaughn has been hired to help adapt the novel, as it moves to CBS.

CBS will be turning the original movie idea into a limited series instead, which will consist of 13 episodes in total for a winter release next year. Steven Spielberg’ s Amblin Entertainment will still produce the show, while Niels Arden “The girl with the dragon tattoo” Oplev will direct the first episode.

The Stephen King novel might actually be better suited to this format. It’s a big story, and one that involves drugs, corruption, chaos and rebellion inside the dome,. Here’s the original novel synopsis:

On an entirely normal, beautiful fall day in Chester’s Mill, Maine, the town is inexplicably and suddenly sealed off from the rest of the world by an invisible force field. Planes crash into it and fall from the sky in flaming wreckage, a gardener’s hand is severed as “the dome” comes down on it, people running errands in the neighboring town are divided from their families, and cars explode on impact.

No one can fathom what this barrier is, where it came from, and when — or if — it will go away. Dale Barbara, Iraq vet and now a short-order cook, finds himself teamed with a few intrepid citizens — town newspaper owner Julia Shumway, a physician’s assistant at the hospital, a select-woman, and three brave kids.

Against them stands Big Jim Rennie, a politician who will stop at nothing — even murder — to hold the reins of power, and his son, who is keeping a horrible secret in a dark pantry. But their main adversary is the Dome itself. Because time isn’t just short. It’s running out.

According to Deadline, the story adaptation from Vaugn will have “kept the general conceit and many of the characters from the book but also introduced some new characters as regulars and tweaked some details and backstory for the existing ones.”

King seems to be happy with the direction so far, or has been paid enough cash in any event, and has signed off on the changes made to his original book.

Last Updated: November 30, 2012

3 Comments

  1. I have to say, this is a fantastic book. I hope they can do it justice with the adaptation. There’s some pretty dark themes in the book, so will be interesting to see how they approach it. Also I wonder what changes they’ve made…

    Reply

  2. Justin Hess

    November 30, 2012 at 13:45

    Oh my holy fuck yeah. This is fantastic news. Vaughan is one of my favourite writers ever and I have yet to read anything of his that could be considered duff.

    Awesome that King also seems to feel the same way judging by his pull-quote for Vaughan’s Y the Last Man, where he calls it the greatest graphic novel he has ever read

    Reply

  3. Tracy Benson

    November 30, 2012 at 15:06

    I can get excited for this. Along with The Stand, Under the Dome is my favourite Stephen King book, and a miniseries is definitely the best way to tackle his books as opposed to a movie. Depending on which actors they get, this could be very good

    Reply

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