Just when you thought the end of the spooky season couldn’t hurt any more than it already does, TVLine says Hulu has decided not to renew its Stephen King-inspired anthology series Castle Rock for a third season. That means last year’s take on Misery, with Lizzy Caplan as young Annie Wilkes, will be the last we see of Maine’s creepiest little hamlet—at least until King writes another book that takes place there, which should be happening any minute now (‘cause he’s so prolific, you see).
The basic pitch for Castle Rock was that it served as sort of a remix of familiar King characters and storylines, all centered around the eponymous town and some surrounding places from the wider King Universe like Shawshank State Prison and Jerusalem’s Lot, with recognizable names or personalities (or even faces, in the case of It’s Bill Skarsgård) showing up in the service of new stories. Unfortunately for Castle Rock, the nail in its coffin—or maybe the axe in its back, if you want to get thematic—came back in April when Castle Rock producer J.J. Abrams teamed up with HBO Max to develop a project called Overlook that sounds… a hell of a lot like Castle Rock. We don’t know much about it, but it’s set in the universe of The Shining and is centered on the untold stories of the Overlook Hotel. In other words, it’s probably another anthology show, but at a haunted hotel instead of a creepy town. So don’t cry for Castle Rock, because you’ll be able to see something similar on HBO Max someday.
Now, if we’re talking the Stephen King extended universe, could we get someone back to work on a Dark Tower thing? Amazon’s TV show fell apart, so the books are just sitting there for some foolish studio to come along and blow a bunch of money on a sci-fi/fantasy/western about a cowboy and a wizard where Stephen King himself eventually shows up as a character.