Hi Folks!

We’re pleased to report that Gauntlet Press will be publishing a definitive collection centered around “Battleground” by Stephen King, which was adapted for television by Richard Christian Matheson!

This deluxe edition includes King’s short story and R.C. Matheson’s script for the opening episode of “Nightmares and Dreamscapes,” which starred William Hurt and was directed by Brian Henson, plus hundreds of pages of bonus features you won’t find anywhere else.

Special features include unique “behind the scenes” material like the storyboards used for the episode, which won two Emmy awards. The book also contains 8 pages of color photos from TNT’s archives, which have never been released to the public.

Those contributing include:
* Director Brian Henson

* Executive Producer Bill Haber

* Jeff Beal, who won an Emmy for his score for Battleground

* Actor William Hurt

* Michael Wright, Executive Vice President and Director of Programming for TNT

* Visual Effects director Sam Nicholson

* Producer Jeff Hayes

* Lee Romaire, Special Makeup and Effects Designer

Editing the book is Richard Christian Matheson, who also wrote the screenplay for the episode.

Place your order today so you don’t miss out!

The Limited Edition traycases are due to arrive on Monday, and we will begin shipping that edition at that time.  Please note that it will probably take the entire week to ship all 750 copies due to the extra steps involved in shipping the Limited Edition, so please do not panic if you do not receive a shipping confirmation right away.

Please Note: Cemetery Dance managing editor Brian James Freeman has posted the first photos of the Gift Edition and the Limited Edition on his blog, with more to come:

Be sure to subscribe to his blog to be emailed about future updates and photos of interest to Stephen King fans.  There are some cool, exclusive things in the works!

Last week, I participated in a conference call with several other journalists hosted by A&E to promote Bag of Bones, which premieres on Sunday, December 11. This is the first time I’ve been involved in something like this. Basically it’s a press conference, except it’s done over the phone. While it seemed a little chaotic at first, once the moderator established the rules, everything fell into place. Each of us got to ask three questions in turn.

The interview guest was Annabeth Gish, who plays Jo Noonan in the two-part, four-hour miniseries, which is directed by Mick Garris and stars Pierce Brosnan, Gish, Melissa George and William Schallert. In case you haven’t seen it already, here are the links to my three-part interview with Mick Garris, which was posted on FEARNet.com: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. Stay tuned later this week for my review of the miniseries, which I watched with my wife last week.

Gish previously appeared in Garris’s 2006 TV movie Desperation, where she played Mary Jackson. She received an offer for the part of Mike Noonan’s wife, read the script and accepted the role, even though her character dies early in the movie. “Jo was so clearly drawn, and her essence is throughout the film, so in that sense she kind of resonates. I was automatically drawn to say ‘yes’ for several reasons. One is that I’ve worked with the director, Mick Garris, before and I absolutely adore him. And, again, this is another Stephen King project for me and I respect him immensely. I just jumped at the chance.”

Because of the nature of her role, her on-screen moments are almost entirely with Pierce Brosnan. She first met Brosnan during the photo sessions that gave rise to the Dark Score Stories website before filming began. “You can get to know a little bit more about Jo and her paintings and her relationship to solving the Sara Tidwell murder . . . That was nice to get loose and to play, because we were supposed to be captured as in real life moments. That was really helpful to get to know each other.” They also took a rowboat ride together, but she didn’t feel it was necessary to process their relationship too much before the cameras rolled. “Here’s the thing about Pierce Brosnan that I can’t say enough: He is a consummate professional and an actor. He would come so prepared, with so many diverse options and choices. He’s such an impeccable actor and a great human being that what he brought was fantastic.” A scene in which she lies on the dock with Brosnan was a personal highlight for her. “He’s always been idol of mine from a young age,” she says, remembering him for his days on Remington Steele.

The fact that she was working with Garris for the second time helped, too. “You’ve gotten all of the niceties out of the way. You’re comfortable. You know each other. You know each other’s styles. And Mick has such an open heart. My level of comfort with him was immense, and I trust him implicitly. I would do anything for him. Mick is such an exquisite filmmaker. He has this mastery of horror. Anything he did technically with this film, I trusted, and you knew it was going to be beautiful. Sometimes when you walk onto a set you know everyone is in accordance with the director. Everybody is getting the memo. Filming is working efficiently. That was the vibe whenever I worked.”

Because she is the mother of two young children, she didn’t relish the idea of spending a lot of time away from them, or taking them to Nova Scotia to live in a hotel. She says that everyone worked around her schedule. “I had to take five separate trips to Halifax, but I was able to do only three and four days away from my sons. They were so considerate to me being a mom and knowing that I didn’t want to leave my sons.”

As for Nova Scotia, which doubles for Maine in the miniseries, she says, “Halifax itself as a location was this murky, mysterious, lush landscape that really fit. I think it really gives a sense of the landscape and infuses the film throughout. Weather in that kind of coastal environment always can present a problem but it was beautiful. I would shoot in Halifax any time. I think it’s such a gorgeous area of the planet and I would return there in a heartbeat.”

The most difficult aspect of the miniseries for her was the fact that she had to convey her character’s spirit. “You have a limited amount of time to convey a certain amount of feeling. Mick and I particularly talked a lot about Jo’s essence and what needed to come as a kind of feeling state without words over the screen, which is really amorphous and difficult to execute.

To help capture her character’s vibe, between scenes she often hung out in the set of Jo’s studio and examined the paintings. “They are so kinetic and so emotionally turbulent that they were an immediate hook in for me to Jo. I love that. I have no painting/artistic ability at all but just to take a brush and pretend and follow the strokes of this artist and imagine was inspiring. Pierce is a painter. He paints and draws. On an artistic level it made me think about taking a painting class, even though I’m not good at it.”

An early scene that has her underneath her bed was both psychologically disturbing and physically challenging. “We would get under the bed when we were children, but I don’t know when I’ve been under my bed recently. It was kind of a tight-quarters stunt that they actually did have to pull me with velocity from under the bed. I couldn’t sleep that night thinking of a wife reaching out to her husband from beyond the living world. It’s pretty scary. From a physical, visceral experience of filming, that was one of my favorite scenes.” However, she says, the impact of such scenes doesn’t stay with her long, “Maybe I didn’t sleep for a couple of nights, but after the movie it’s gone. It hasn’t affected my life.”

She also had to undergo extensive makeup sessions. “This project has probably been one of the most physically challenging for me in the sense of the prosthetics. I had to do a four-hour make-up job three times and become the ghost of Jo. That was for me personally very scary. It was claustrophobic and you have to wear all of this gunk all over your body. That was challenging.”

A scene involving a bus crash early in the movie was also challenging. “It was a short scene but it was a very difficult scene to shoot, not diminished by the fact that it was freezing cold and raining in Halifax that day. It was very emotional. To speak to Pierce’s commitment level, he just went for it and brought his grief to life. It was emotional and wrenching.”

She didn’t read King’s novel until after she read the script and had started working on the project. She pointed out some differences between the two that are necessary for “the economy of bringing such a large piece to the screen, to television.” However, she continues, “what I found so impressive in hindsight was how Matt [Venne], the screenwriter, really captured the extent of that universe, that world—it’s kind of like three worlds. It’s Jo and Mike, and it’s Mattie and Mike and then it’s Sara Tidwell and Mike. There are some discrepancies but in general the essence of the project is very authentic and loyal to the book. The script was so tight once we went to production, and so good that our goal was just to be faithful to what we saw on the script pages.”

Though she only started reading King after doing Desperation, Gish has a copy of On Writing on the nightstand in her bedroom, and is currently reading Lisey’s Story, which see describes as “phenomenal.” She says that King’s books translate well into film “because he always has character at the heart of his horror. There is always a real human struggle within these extravagant, horrific circumstances. It’s reality pulled out to its most dramatic stakes. What Stephen King does so masterfully is the human element. He does love. He’s really an expert at writing about love, which is probably why all of his horror is so good.” She says that the miniseries “is not just a horror film or a mystery project or a thriller or a love story—it’s all of them. People will, on a purely entertainment level, be able to sit down, get a little scared, have a few tears, freak out and fall in love with these people.”

She is attracted to horror, but not for horror’s sake. The goal of Bag of Bones is “not just to scare the bejeezus out of anybody. It’s all wrapped very intricately in with a story about real drama and real heart and/or real mystery. This isn’t about zombies, this is about a love affair—three love affairs. This about solving a mystery. This is about race. This is about genealogy. It spans a whole expanse of things that I think people will be drawn to watch it for.”

She says that she “kind of believes” in ghosts and that spirits can exist and wander around. “I would say I have met some ghosts before, let’s just put it that way. I have danced with a few ghosts. I don’t know how you can’t. When you’re on a set, you’re inviting this world in, and if you’re open you can’t help but be sensitive to it. I’m not opposed to believing in it, that’s for sure.” However, what really scares her are catastrophic events, such as someone from her family being harmed.

Social media has played an important part in promoting Bag of Bones. Programs like Twitter neutralize the playing field, she says, by letting people know that “everybody is human and happy to share about their life and open up beyond their work. Pretty Little Liars is what got me started because their whole social network is humungous and electric and certainly wields a lot of power, I would say. They kind of were schooling me in Twitter and how to tweet and all that, and then you do realize that it is a wonderful new platform. It’s hard to define the line between being private and self-promoting. I don’t post pictures of my kids or my husband or anything intimate like that. I do try to use it mainly to publicize the work that I’m doing and also to show a little bit more who I am personally. But that’s me, not my family.”

She has been acting since the age of thirteen and feels lucky not to be pigeonholed in a certain kind of role or genre. In some ways, she feels that her career is just beginning. “Now that I’m forty and I have two children, I’m thinking more along specific lines. What do I want? Your clock starts ticking and you think, what do I want to really say with my work? Things are clicking into place and I feel much more compelled to be driven now, which is odd. I’m excited to see what the next ten years will bring. I think that they might bring a little more concentrated focus, perhaps.” She says she would love to dig deeper into flawed characters like the one she portrayed on Brotherhood, and she would also like to do action films. “A new phase for me, too, is to start developing things of my own that I have passion for, that I’m excited to bring and be more proactively involved in rather than just showing up and doing my job. To comprehensively create something.”

She never feels the need to shift gears when shifting genres. “As an actor, you just play the truth. Whomever you’re playing, whatever circumstances they’re in, whether they’re on a horse or they’re in a space ship or whatever, that’s their truth and you just play the truth. As long as you’re being honest and authentic, then you can cross any genre.”

Bag of Bones will run on A&E on December 11th and 12th as a four-hour miniseries. Part 1 of my interview with Mick Garris is now up at FEARNet. Stay tuned for Part 2 next week and Part 3 the week after that.

A&E provided more pictures than we were able to use at FEARNet so here are a few that I selected to accompany Part 1 that haven’t been published before.

Welcome to Dark Score Lake

Mike Noonan (Pierce Brosnan) and his wife Jo (Annabeth Gish)

Director Mick Garris prepares to shoot a bookstore scene featuring a signing by mid-list author Mike Noonan.

Pierce Brosnan as Mike Noonan at the Dark Score Lake Fair in 1939. Sara Tidwell (played by Anika Noni Rose) is on the stage with her band.

This is 11/22/63 week. The book will be on shelves tomorrow and King’s tour in support of the novel will also be taking place this week, starting today in Boston. Check out the cool interactive Scribner site for the book.

Other than the public events previously listed, the following are scheduled for the coming days:

• November 8th: Today on NBC (two segments)
• November 9th: Morning Joe on msnbc
• November 11th: Hardball with Chris Matthews
• November 13th: Today (Sunday edition)

The event in Boston at the JFK Library is supposed to be webcast as I write this update, but I’m not getting anything. The video will be archived at their website within a couple of weeks and may also be available at King’s official website in the Multimedia section.

I’ll be in Dallas on Thursday and Friday, so if you see me, feel free to come up and say hi!

The book has been getting a lot of review coverage, most of it very favorable. Here are the ones I found, starting with my own:

• FEARNet: A Doorway to 1963
• NY Times
• Washington Post
• Guardian
• NPR
• Associated Press
• Time magazine and companion article: How 11/22/63 Fits Into Stephen King’s Ever-Expanding Universe
• Chicago Tribune
• Milwaukee Journal Sentinal
• St. Louis Post Dispatch
• Houston Chronicle
• Cleveland Plain Dealer
• Columbus Dispatch
• Maine Sunday Telegram
• Miami Herald
• Minneapolis Star Tribune
• New York Post
• Bangor Daily News

In addition, here are some interviews King has done recently:

• Wired magazine and audio of the complete conversation
• Stephen King – the best-selling author speaks about his life, career and Scottish weather
• Wall Street Journal interview
• Tesco Q&A
• Enhanced eBook trailer
• Book trailer

Also, listen to Craig Wasson talking about the audiobook.

Bag of Bones wrapped filming a while back and will air as a two-night/four-miniseries on A&E in early December. Though preliminary dates were announced, these are not carved in stone. A couple of teaser trailers are available on YouTube: Beware the Lake and this Behind the Scenes video.

At an awards ceremony at George Mason University last month, King surprised the audience by reading a chapter from Dr. Sleep, which is a sequel to The Shining featuring Danny Torrance some thirty-five years after his experience at the Overlook Hotel. You can watch King’s reading along with the Q&A session that accompanied the award presentation here. I wrote an essay for FearNet discussing the genesis of Dr. Sleep called Whatever happened to Danny Torrance?

Most of the details for King’s book tour for 11/22/63 have been announced and tickets to these events are selling rapidly. Even though the book won’t be out for a while, the film rights have been snapped up. Jonathan Demme optioned the feature rights,  and is set to write, direct and produce the adaptation through his Clinica Estetico banner. Excerpts from the audiobook are being released each Monday and Friday. Scribner has also produced a 2 minute video in which King discusses 11/22/63

DreamWorks’ Spielberg and Stacey Snider nabbed the rights to Under the Domel shortly after it was published in November 2009 to strong reviews and the current plan is to air the adaptation on Showtime. Search is underway for a writer to write the project, whose executive producers will include King and DreamWorks TV’s Justin Falvey and Darryl Frank.

The eBook exclusive Mile 81 is out now. I wrote an essay for FearNet discussing King’s history with electronic publication that goes back farther than you probably realized: King of the eBooks.

IDW announced this week that they will be adapting the King/Joe Hill collaboration Throttle as a comic/graphic novel. Their story will be adapted in two monthly issues starting in February 2012 and will be followed by two issues adapting the story that inspired Throttle, Richard Matheson’s classic tale of suspense, Duel, beginning in April.

There’s probably still time to catch an airing of A Night at the Movies: The Horrors of Stephen King on TCM. The network shows repeat airings on October 18 and 24. Check your local provider for details. Here’s an interview with interviewer author/filmmaker Laurent Bouzereau: THE KING’S SCREECH.

A couple of weeks after Haven wrapped its second season, SyFy announced they were renewing the weekly series for a third season. Guess we’ll get to know whose gun went off after all.

The Stephen King Library Desk Calendar 2012 is now up for preorder to Book of the Month Club/Stephen King Library members. The theme this year is the Dark Tower and I have an essay in it.

The next installment of the Marvel graphic novel series is The Way Station. It debuts in December.

Interesting links:

• King reviews The Leftovers by Tom Perrota for the New York Times
• Donald M. Grant page for The Wind Through the Keyhole featuring a sample of Jae Lee’s artwork

Hodder & Stoughton has produced a short promo video for 11/22/63.

Movie news:

Bag of Bones is currently filming in Nova Scotia, Canada. Mick Garris is directing from a script by Matt Venne. A&E network will air this four-hour minseries over two nights, perhaps later on this year. The cast includes Pierce Brosnan (Mike Noonan), Annabeth Gish (Jo Noonan), Melissa George (Mattie Devore) and Anika Noni Rose (Sara Tidwell). Kelly Rowland’s name has also been mentioned in association with the film, but not for a specific role.

Jonathan Demme (Silence of the Lambs) has optioned 11/22/63 and will write, produce and direct the film. Variety says that King will executive produce. There’s no distributor yet, but Demme hopes to start filming toward the end of 2012.

Warner Bros. is in the process of finalizing the deals for Harry Potter director David Yates and Steve Kloves, who scripted the final three Potter films, to re-team for a multi-movie version of The Stand.

Alexandre Aja may to direct the remake of Pet Sematary for Paramount.

Upcoming short fiction appearances:

• “Little God of Agony” in A Book of Horrors, edited by Stephen Jones
• “The Dune” in Granta magazine’s Fall/Winter horror-themed issue. You can pre-order the single issue at Amazon

Mark your calendars:

• King will appear and sign books at the Fall for the Book Festival at George Mason University in Fairfax, VA on September 23, 2011. Tickets become available on Monday, August 15. Though admission is free, tickets are required and there is a limit of two tickets per request. See Center for the Arts Ticket Office.
• On Monday, October 3, at 8 p.m. (Eastern), Turner Classic Movies will premiere A Night at the Movies: The Horrors of Stephen King, with in which King will discuss the classic horror films that influenced him the most. He takes viewers on a journey through many aspects of the horror genre, including vampires, zombies, demons and ghosts. He also examines the fundamental reasons behind moviegoers’ incessant craving for being frightened. Along the way, he discusses the movies that have had a real impact on his writing, including Freaks (1932), Cat People (1942), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), Night of the Living Dead (1968), The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), Jaws (1975), Halloween (1978) and The Changeling (1980).
• King will be touring to support 11/22/63. The following dates have been announced: Boston (11/7), Dallas (11/10 & 11/11), New Orleans (11/12),  Sarasota (11/14), Atlanta (12/14)

An abridged version of King’s introduction to the new centenary edition of Lord of the Flies can be found in the London Telegraph.

King’s official web site and Scribner today announced the September 1, 2011 release of Mile 81. This 80 page eBook exclusive contains the title story and an excerpt from 11/22/63. You can read the story synopsis here. If the title sounds vaguely familiar, you have an astute memory: the rest stop at Mile 81 of the Maine Turnpike is mentioned (just once, in passing) in Dreamcatcher. Don’t have a Kindle? There are apps for these books for iPhones and iPads, and also a program you can install on a Windows PC to read Kindle content.

Scribner has also announced the publication date for The Wind Through the Keyhole: April 3, 2012. They show the book as being 336 pages, but that’s probably just an estimate at this point. I’ll have a brief review of the book in Cemetery Dance #66. Though they aren’t ready to take orders yet, Grant Books announced that their edition will be out in February. CD & Grant are both producing custom slipcases for the trade edition.

King will have a new short story, “The Little Green God of Agony,” in Stephen Jones’s anthology A Book of Horrors. I haven’t seen anything about a US release yet, but Amazon/UK is accepting pre-orders for the British edition, which comes out in September.

The second season of Haven premieres on SyFy tonight.

Brian Grazer and Ron Howard discuss the Dark Tower movie adaptation at Deadline.com.

David Yates, who directed the last four Harry Potter films, is mulling over whether he will direct the trilogy of films Warner Bros has proposed for The Stand.

Previews of the new musical version of Carrie are set for Aug. 1 at Lucille Lortel Theatre.  Marin Mazzie & Molly Ranson star.

King’s essay My Summer Reading List is now online at the Entertainment Weekly website.

Tickets for Ghost Brothers of Darkland County are now on sale at the Alliance Theatre box office. King discusses the play in this video interview.

Simon & Schuster has made available an excerpt of 11/22/63, which you can read here. It features a cameo from a familiar “character.” Word out of Book Expo America is that the first printing will be 1 million copies. Craig Wasson will narrate the audiobook.

King’s new short story “Under the Weather” is included in the US trade paperback of Full Dark, No Stars, out now.

Jae Lee has signed on to illustrate The Wind Through the Keyhole, which will be published as a limited edition by Donald M. Grant Publisher. Orders are not yet being taken and a final release date has not been established. King has agreed to sign 800 copies of a Deluxe Edition which will be issued in a tray case.

Hollywood Reporter has an update on the status of the Dark Tower adaptation and Ron Howard told Entertainment Weekly, “We had to pull back to our September start date due to budget delays and ongoing story development and logistical issues, but Dark Tower is moving forward,” Howard said. “We’re thinking of starting in early spring now. I can’t really say who’ll be in it yet, but Javier Bardem has shown a great deal of interest. We’ll know by the end of the summer, when our flashing green light goes solid.” The project would start with a feature film, followed by six hours of TV content, starring the same actors as in the movie. “There are elements of the Dark Tower saga that are more personal and can be best dealt with on television,” Howard continued. “TV allows you to roll out details of the characters in a more methodical way.”

King has a new essay and a recipe in Man with a Pan, edited by John Donahue.  The recipe is for “pretty good cake,” and in the essay King advocates the many uses of the frying pan and emphasizes the benefits of cooking over medium heat (plus a bit). He also returns to the pages of Entertainment Weekly with “My Summer Reading List, Best of Summer 2011″ (June 3rd issue).

King is interviewed in Screem #22, their all-vampire issue. I also have an essay in that issue about ‘Salem’s Lot, the two TV miniseries adaptations and the dreadful “sequel.”

“The River” writer Michael Green is at work adapting Under the Dome in preparation for DreamWorks TV to shop to broadcast and cable buyers in a few months. There have been reports that Bag of Bones is filming as a TV miniseries as well.

Here’s a commentary by King on his Alliance Theatre musical Ghost Brothers of Darkland County and a call for cast members from Playbill. Lilja has some photos from the press conference at Lilja’s Library.

Haven is gearing up for its second season. There’s an article at Fangoria, a trailer and an interview with star Emily Rose.

It: The 25th Anniversary Special Limited Edition
by Stephen King

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As always, thanks for your continued support and enthusiasm!