A recent Stephen King novel that garnered widespread acclaim from his fans is set to be adapted into a series by Bourne director Paul Greengrass.
Fairy Tale, a rare venture into the fantasy genre for the renowned author of It and The Shining, was published in 2022 and sparked a heated bidding war.
Although Universal Pictures secured the film rights, the 600-page novel proved too complex to be condensed into a feature film, prompting Uncut Gems and Midsommar studio A24 to reimagine the story as a 10-part series.
The novel tells the story of 17-year-old Charlie Reade, who inherits keys to a portal leading to a new world beset by evil forces.
King, who regularly publishes at least one new book a year, including recent successes Holly and The Institute, received rave reviews for the 2022 epic, hailed as one of his best works in years, reports the Mirror.
Horror Geek Life praised it as his "best novel in the last decade", noting it marked "an absolute return to form in King's character development."
"For me, this probably ranks somewhere among his top 10 books," they added. "Which is pretty incredible, considering he has over 30 books on the New York Times Best-Sellers list and is 75 years old.
"Check this one out soon. You won't regret it. Long live the King."
Alison Flood of The Guardian shared a similar sentiment, describing it as "vintage, timeless King, a transporting, terrifying treat born from multiple lockdowns."
Slate also praised the book, calling it "the best kind of page-turner", a novel that "will remind you how much fun reading can be."
They write: "You'll inhale Fairy Tale in big 100-page swaths without the slightest effort or strain, and you'll be grateful that there are 600-plus pages of it to remind you several times over how much fun that kind of reading experience is."
And the New York Times hailed it as a "multiverse-traversing, genre-hopping intertextual mash-up, with plenty of Easter eggs for regular King devotees.
"Thankfully, it's also a solid episodic adventure, a page-turner driven by memorably strange encounters and well-rendered, often thrilling action."
The ardent followers of King, now 77, will be eagerly anticipating how the new adaptation of his renowned body of work stacks up against past successes like Carrie, Cujo, The Shawshank Redemption, and numerous others.
Despite being known for his intimidatingly thick novels, readers still have ample opportunity to delve into the 600 pages of Fairy Tale before Charlie's journey transitions from page to screen.
While it remains a mystery which platform will showcase the A24 production, the studio's prior television projects have found homes on HBO (Euphoria, The Idol), Paramount+ (The Curse) and Apple TV+ (Sunny).
