Stephen King says shelved ‘Salem’s Lot remake isn’t “embarrassing or anything”
People who have seen the new adaptation agree that it shouldn't be thrown in the garbage
One thing that can be said about the increasingly long list of things that Warner Bros. Discovery has put on a shelf, permanently or not, is that it rarely seems to be related to the thing’s actual quality. They tried to pull that scheme with Batgirl, but with Coyote Vs. Acme they’re just like “nah, we don’t feel like it” and then the studio takes the tax write-off (or however this scam works). And yet everyone seems really insistent on clarifying that Gary Dauberman’s new adaptation of Stephen King’s ‘Salem’s Lot—which was filmed in 2021 and has been gathering dust since then—is actually good.
The movie lost its theatrical release date back in 2022, but an anonymous source said in October that it had nothing to do with the film’s quality and was actually about Warner Bros. Discovery’s plan to potentially release it on Max (to fill a content hole created by the SAG-AFTRA strike). But that strike has been over for a long time and the film still doesn’t have any sort of release date.
Now Stephen King himself is weighing in, saying on Twitter that he’s seen Dauberman’s film and that he thinks it’s “quite good.” He calls it “old-school horror” with a “slow build” and “big payoff.” He enjoyed it so much that he’s “not sure why WB is holding back,” adding that it’s “not like it’s embarrassing, or anything.” To be clear, though, he did add that he just writes “the fucking things,” so he’s not an expert on the film industry. Also, King fans will know that the main enjoys some self-promotion, and while he’s not on the same level as John “I’ll say whatever you want me to say about a new Halloween movie once the check clears” Carpenter, he does tend to find positive things to say about most adaptations of his work.
Still, it’s an adaptation of a Stephen King book with some name recognition, starring Lewis Pullman from Top Gun: Maverick, and with James Wan’s Atomic Monster label on as a producer. Those are good things. Plus, at least two people think it’s good enough to not be thrown directly in the garbage. Surely someone would want to release a movie like that, right? Not WB boss David Zaslav, of course, because he hates movies, but someone else!