Stephen King had one of his biggest years ever in 2025 since the big burst of King adaptions back in 2017 – 2019. With 3 movies in theaters: “The Monkey”, “The Long Walk” and “The Running Man”, along with 2 new series: “The Institute” and the wildly popular “It: Welcome to Derry” series from HBO, King has proven that his stories are timeless and worthy of being treated with the utmost respect. As any King fan knows, his works have been plagued by lackluster attempts at bringing the master of macabre’s work to the small and big screens. The Duffer Brothers recently threw in the towel after being signed for years to a development deal for the 80’s Stephen King epic story Co-Written with Peter Straub called “The Talisman”. The book had been sought after as an adaptation even before it was finished, with Steven Spielberg become almost obsessed with the project after reading an early draft before the novel was even finished. Spielberg got Universal Pictures to buy the rights for the book forever, a rare move with IP for TV or film.
Since then, the book has sat in development hell for decades. Amblin eventually took on the IP in the late 2000’s with a 6 episode TNT series, but King believed they didn’t have the right budget for the show and the series went back into development. More recently, Amblin was set to develop the property with Netflix and made a deal with the Duffer Brothers to develop the beloved book. This deal lasted years until Christmas of 2025 when the Duffers admitted that they could not break the curse either. Although the book had more than few similarities to the “Stranger Things” story, the brothers did not seem ot come up with an angle that they were happy with against whatever bidget Netflix was considering. Seeing as this novel is likely the ones fans have been waiting longest for, it’s better the Duffers didn’t stay n the project and phone it in – especially given the fact that they have a new deal with Paramount.
The Duffer Brothers recently threw in the towel after being signed for years to a development deal for the 80’s Stephen King epic story Co-Written with Peter Straub called The Talisman.“
What wasn’t expected after the great success of ‘Welcome to Derry’ was the cancellation of a second work of King’s, just one week later. Since 2020, a beloved King story from the 80’s called “The Revelations of ‘Becka Paulson” was set to be produced on The CW. Once the network was bought out and changed their mandate away from teen-centric programming, it was looking less likely that the series would ever get made. Entertainment reporter Matt Mitovitch finally got word of an official confirmation and posted it on his website Matt’s Inside Line that The CW has officially abandoned the 1984 short story. ‘Revelations’ was technically adapted before as it was adapted into an episode of “The Outer Limits” and was also worked into a subplot in the novel “Tommyknockers”, which eventually got a low budget small screen adaptation that even the most faithful of King fans have to cringe a little at.
The fact that the series died in The CW doesn’t mean it deons’t have potential, but it might be some time before a new buyer comes along that wants to take a chance on an IP that sat around in development for years. As a longtime fan of King’s literary work, it’s bittersweet to watch some of the older attempts at bringing King’s dark visions to life, but for every ‘Shining’ and ‘Shawshank’, there are equally forgettable entries in the author’s long list of works.
As of now, King still has 3 possible sereis in development with “Carry” over at Amazon MGM, “Fairy Tale” at A24 and a possible ‘Overlook’ spin-off in limbo with Warner Bros. King also has second seasons of “The Institute” and ‘Welcome to Derry’ in pre-production.
On the film side, King has an adaptation of a book called “Billy Summers” being produced by Bad Robot with a short story adaptation of “Mister Yummy” being made by Intrinsic Value Films. There have also been rumors of a new ‘It’ movie being made, but no official announcements as of yet.
The rumors surrounding a new ‘It’ movie purport that it would be about the origins of how ‘It’ came ot Earth and would technically be a prequel. It also appears a film made this way would be pre-Pennywise, which is probably unlikely due to the star power of the primordial evil clown
What do you think? Should the Duffer Brothers have prioritized “The Talisman”? Will we ever get a strong faithful adaptation of the classic book and its sequel? With Stephen King working on a third book in the series, anything is possible. Will we ever see “The Revelations of ‘Becka Paulson” on the small screen again? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
