Netflix suffer blow as horror director moves to Amazon for Stephen King adaptation
The popular horror director Mike Flanagan, who is best known for projects such as The Haunting of Hill House and Doctor Sleep, has reportedly signed a deal with Amazon Studios for a limited series based on Carrie, the Stephen King novel published in 1974.
After exclusively working with Netflix on a number of original series and movies, including an adaptation of Stephen King’s follow-up to The Shining in 2019, the director is now teaming up with King but with the support of another streaming platform.
Flannagan’s collaboration with Amazon Studios is perhaps a result of these restrictions, and he is set to also serve as an executive producer on the Carrie series.
This marks the end of a long collaboration between Netflix and Flanagan, and with his contributions to the platform being some of their most-watched shows, it is sure to be a big blow to the studio. However, it is perhaps not surprising to some that Flanagan has chosen to work elsewhere after his recent public comments about the studio’s restrictions on filmmakers releasing physical copies of their work or having substantial theatrical release periods.
Netflix has recently been under the spotlight for this behaviour after Daniel Craig criticised the studio at a press conference and their refusal to release the Knives Out sequel in cinemas. The Netflix CEO said it ‘wasn’t in line with their business model’ in which Craig replied, “Your business model is f*cked”.
Carrie is the first novel published by King and follows a bullied high school student who discovers she has telekinetic powers. It was first adapted for the screen in 1976 with Sissy Spacek starring as the lead, which quickly became a cult classic.
Amazon Studios are currently looking to remake and adapt many of King’s novels for the screen, with the writer being heavily involved in the production process. King was famously very critical of Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of The Shining, in which he didn’t like the auteur’s take on the story and deviation from the source material. However, Kubrick had stated that they only ever intended to use the novel as a starting point and had planned on rewriting some of King’s original elements.
King believed that the story needed a redemption arc for Jack Torrence, and many say that the writer personally related to the character’s struggle with alcoholism and didn’t like the way Kubrick portrayed it. Apparently, the director also pointed out to King that ‘murder’ read backwards would be ‘rebrum’ and not ‘redrum’, with rumours that King was frustrated by the directors’ criticisms of his writing. Kubrick adapted the novel with writer Dian Johnson, who described his approach as being “very literary and intellectual”.
Despite the early controversies around the adaptation of King’s work, there have been many successful collaborations between King and other filmmakers such as Brian de Palma, who were said to have had a great working relationship. Carrie is revered as one of the greatest horror films ever made, and many horror fans are eagerly awaiting the modern remake of this iconic story.