We’re closing in on the end of 2022 and, as some of my fellow Stephen King fans have surely noticed by now, we are no closer to knowing when Gary Dauberman’s forthcoming ‘Salem’s Lot adaptation is gonna hit theaters. Hell, we haven’t even seen a trailer.
It’s an unfortunate turn of events, one we hope gets sorted sooner rather than later, but while we’re waiting: Lewis Pullman, star of the new Lot, offers some fresh commentary on the film in a new interview with ComicBook.com (tip o’ the hat to Bloody Disgusting for spotting it, by the way):
“Gary Dauberman, the director, is really keen on doing justice to the book. But also, the previous adaptation was a two-parter, because it’s such a hefty book and there are so many different moving parts and so many characters. So there are some parts where Gary had to press and find what was really at the heart of the movie to keep in, but for the most part, he’s really true to the book and keeping a lot of the original dialogue in there. He’s a Stephen King hound dog so he doesn’t wanna do Stephen dirty.”
Gotta side with Gary Dauberman on this: if you’re gonna adapt King, you better not do him dirty. Pullman goes on to say:
“I think it’s in good hands, Gary’s a really smart guy who has a keen eye for things. I think, not just lean on the jump scares, but lean on the more conceptual and visual things that, rather than a shock that fades out of your body in the next five minutes, something that’s more visual, like an imprint that burnt into your retinas as a disturbing image that you’ll wake up in the middle of the night that you can’t shake out of your head.”
Now this part’s precisely what this writer wanted to hear. Faithfulness to the source material can be good (and lord knows it’s important to many King fanatics), but I’m willing to exchange “100% true to the source material” for “genuinely frightening, really gets under your skin” any ol’ day of the week. Especially if that means dropping some of the jump-scares (really, we’re all good on the jump-scare front for a while, I think).
Despite really wishing this weren’t the case, there is nothing further to report on the new ‘Salem’s Lot at this time. We’ll keep you informed as those updates roll in, however, and are crossing our fingers that they arrive sooner rather than later! Stay tuned.
