J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot is making an adaptation of Stephen King’s Billy Summers
Stephen King's book is about a hitman initially posing as a writer
It feels like a weirdly long time since we got a new Stephen King adaptation, but it’s actually been less than six months since the Adrien Brody-starring Chapelwaite premiered on Epix… and six months also happens to be the length of time it’s been since King published his last book, Billy Summers, and—get this—it’s now getting adapted into a TV show. The circle of life!
The adaptation is coming from J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot and writers Ed Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz, with Zwick directing. That’s according to Deadline, which says the project will be a limited series that will be “six to 10 episodes” long. Deadline also says it will soon be shopped around to “high-end cable networks and streamers.” That probably means they’re aiming a little higher than Epix (no offense to Epix), but Bad Robot’s King stuff has usually gone to Hulu—save for last year’s Lisey’s Story on Apple TV+.
Billy Summers, which was written at the rise of the COVID-19 pandemic and seemingly touches on some of King’s thoughts about isolation, is about a hitman hired to observe and execute a potential witness against big criminal. The book has a well-regarded first half, during which Billy must pose a novelist, if you can believe that in a Stephen King book, but things get weirder and wilder after he accomplishes his assassination gig and the book takes some turns in its second half.
It’ll be interesting to see how or if the Bad Robot team decides to shake things up in the story, since the general consensus is that the first half is really good and that the second half is also there, but the Deadline story doesn’t have any other details about what to expect from the TV version of Billy Summers (including casting). It’s apparently moving fast, though, so maybe we’ll know more soon.