News From The Dead Zone #76

Breaking News from the Dead Zone

The producers of The Talisman miniseries for TNT got together and looked at their scripts and realized something. This movie is going to cost a lot of money. Due to budgetary issues, the six-hour event has been put on hold, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Mick Garris is quoted in the article as saying that ABC couldn’t afford the four-hour version he wrote back in 2000. This doesn’t mean the project is dead, but 2008 looks like a big question mark right now.

Here is the first trailer for The Mist.

Here are a couple of good interviews/articles about The Long Road Home, the second cycle in the Marvel graphic novel series: Comic Book Resource and Newsarama. The series debuts in February 2008.

Jim Shepard will join Richard Russo and Karen Russell, author of St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves at an evening hosted by Stephen King and The Best American Short Stories 2007 series editor Heidi Pitlor on Oct 16 at 8pm at Memorial Church, 1 Harvard Yard, Cambridge. Admission is $15, which includes purchase of the book. Tickets will go on sale mid-September at Harvard Book Store, 1256 Mass. Ave., Cambridge.

Here is the Publishers Weekly review of The Best American Short Stories 2007 (October 10):

King admits in his introduction that he prefers “all-out emotionally assaultive” stories to those that might appeal to his “critical nose.” Yet King’s selections are right at home among those of recent BASS editors Lorrie Moore, Michael Chabon and Walter Mosley: John Barth’s darkly comic take on aging and mortality; a child’s unforgiving view of her alcoholic parent from T.C. Boyle; an exploration of the grief of a crystal meth addict by William Gay (a writer King notes is a relatively obscure “American talent”); Lauren Groff’s piece about a polio survivor learning to swim during the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic (based loosely on real-life Olympian Ethelda Bleibtrey); Roy Kesey’s imagining of an airport terminal as microcosm of global politics; and Karen Russell’s halfway house for the human children of werewolves (“their condition skips a generation”). Stories drawing on horror and on Maine add a personal King touch to this year’s cull of 20, taken from among the 4,000 that series editor Pitlor read last year in periodicals. The book reflects the variety of substance and style and the consistent quality that readers have come to expect from the series, now in its 30th year.

Misery: Collector’s Edition (October 2) will retail for $19.98 and include the following extras: Feature commentary by Rob Reiner, Feature commentary by Screenwriter William Goldman, “Misery Loves Company” featurette, “Marc Shaiman’s Music Misery Tour” featurette,  “Diagnosing Annie Wilkes” featurette (new),  “Advice For The Stalked” featurette(new),  “Profile Of A Stalker” featurette(new),  “Celebrity Stalkers” featurette(new),  “Anti-Stalking Laws” featurette(new), Original Theatrical Trailer, Original Theatrical Teaser.

Winners in the creative arts categories of the 59th annual Primetime Emmy Awards from the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences: Music Composition for a Miniseries, Movie or a Special (Original Dramatic Score): “Nightmares & Dreamscapes: From the Stories of Stephen King: Battleground,” TNT. Special Visual Effects for a Miniseries, Movie or Special: “Nightmares & Dreamscapes: From the Stories of Stephen King: Battleground,” TNT.

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