Doctor Sleep's Mike Flanagan staying in the King business with Revival adaptation

As the rest of the world farts into their couch cushions, gaping into the middle distance and flinching every time COVID slams against their window, The Haunting Of Hill House creator Mike Flanagan is out here making moves. Sure, production on Netflix’s Midnight Mass has ceased due to the pandemic, but the filmmaker has, in the course of a single week, announced two new horror projects.

The first, which we previously reported, is a series adaptation of teen horror legend Christopher Pike’s The Midnight Club. And now—after, we assume, his buddy Stephen King got jealous—The Hollywood Reporter is saying he’s tackling yet another of King’s novels: 2014's holy-rolling Revival. This follows the director’s previous adaptations of Doctor Sleep and Gerald’s Game, the latter of which is, in this writer’s opinion, still the best King film since Frank Darabont’s The Mist.

Revival tracks the relationship between a heroin-addicted musician and a charismatic faith healer, the latter of whom unleashes an unspeakable horror in his efforts to contact his dead wife and child. Flanagan is writing the script with an option to direct, and pursuing the project with Warner Bros. and longtime collaborator Trevor Macy. If it heads into production, it will, like Gerald’s Game and Doctor Sleep, be the first adaptation of the book. No remakes for Flanagan, for which we say thankee-sai.

Flanagan’s isn’t the first stab at Revival, though. Josh Boone, who’s currently at work on CBS All Access’ The Stand, wrote a script for Revival in 2016 with hopes to go into production that year. That, obviously, didn’t happen, which we’re just going to guess is New Mutants’ fault, New Mutants being cursed and all.

Later this year, Flanagan will (hopefully) release his The Haunting Of Hill House follow-up, The Haunting of Bly Manor, because clearly it’s not scary enough out there.