TVSquad

Steven and Stephen are getting together. That is to say that Steven Spielberg and Dreamworks TV are working with Stephen King to make a television movie based on King's latest novel Under The Dome.

The novel is about one of those small New England towns that King enjoys writing about suddenly finding itself trapped in a force field. Unlike The Simpsons Movie, the concept is not played for humorous effect.

The idea is reminiscent of those stories where people are trapped in a confined space and lawlessness sets in. There have been many similar concepts done in TV and film, although I can't think of any particular ones off the top of my head.

As he gets older, King's television presence becomes less. For a few years it seemed like a different TV show based on his work was being produced every year. He may be starting that again. So much for retirement.

It seems like there has been a new Stephen King series appearing on television every other week for as long as I can remember. We had The Stand and Golden Years and The Langoliers and Kingdom Hospital (not to be confused with Garth Marenghi's Darkplace) and a myriad of others. The man has a longer television and movie resumé than Donald Sutherland (well, maybe not).

Now King is returning to the airwaves with Haven, a series based on his novella The Colorado Kid. The premise is about a small town in Maine (as usual) where cursed people live in exile. A female FBI agent named Audrey Parker arrives to solve a mystery and fight supernatural forces.

Is it me or does this sound a lot like the episode of The X-Files that King wrote? In that episode, Scully is in Maine and Mulder only appeared on screen from his office for counsel.

King has been known to recycle ideas. We'll see how this one turns out.

Television has done Stephen King miniseries before. I recall watching The Stand in its entirety. I could have sworn said he was going to retire from the business several years ago, yet he still keeps writing.

Mike Harrison (who wrote and directed the Sci Fi Channel's Dune miniseries) is working on a four-hour miniseries of the horror novel Cell for the Weinstein Company. Harrison has worked with King's material before on the movies Creepshow and Tales from the Darkside: the Movie.

Having never read Cell, it's difficult to have an opinion over whether this will evolve into a quality miniseries. There is some talent behind the show, so that's encouraging.

Ah, the celebrity roast. Comedy Central resurrected the tried and true comedian ass-kiss off with hilarious specials featuring Denis Leary, Flavor Flav, Bob Saget and William #*$&$ing Shatner. Then came the capper: a roast of music legend Willie Nelson. It was a shift in evolution so great, it could have made Charles Darwin buy into the theory of intelligent design.

Then the network caused a global groan so loud that it shifted the tectonic plates when they announced that Nelson had to cancel and they would replace him with Larry the Cable Guy.

It's such an obvious and safe choice that might be a good recipe for ratings, but it's a sure fire recipe for boring. Here are the iconic stars who would have made much better kindling for a white hot comedy roast.

(S06E12) We are finally coming around full circle to address Walt's death from the season premiere. Why we couldn't have been seeing bits of this as we went along, I don't know, but having a cohesive season of episodes in which one week continues logically into the next has never been a goal of The Dead Zone-- and that is fine. I just wish it would decide whether it wants to be a serial show or not, because it certainly is when it wants to be.

Last month, I started taking a course in basic video techniques. The first day of class, the professor gave us a large packet on all the number one no-no's of amateur filmmaking. The next evening, I happened upon a few episodes of Garth Marenghi's Darkplace and suddenly, I saw everything in that twenty-four page packet spring to life before my very eyes. The hilariously cheesy effects, poor acting, and continuity so awful that it would have made even Ed Wood weep... Somehow, within six short episodes, this show had done every television "don't".

Rumors about Steven Spielberg helming an adaptation of The Talisman, the novel by Stephen King and Peter Straub, have been circulating for almost as long as the book itself has been in print, almost three decades. Last year reports began to pop up again that a film adaptation was in the works, but still nothing. Now, however, it's official: Steven Spielberg and Kathleen Kennedy will be executive producing the six-hour adaptation for DreamWorks Television, set to air on TNT in the summer of 2008. Ehren Krueger (Arlington Road, The Ring, The Brothers Grimm) is penning the script.

The novel focuses on Jack Sawyer, a young boy who sets out on a quest to find the titular talisman, a magic artifact that may save his mother, who is dying of cancer. Jack flips back and forth between parallel worlds, his own reality and another called "the Territories." This novel, along with its sequel, 2001's Black House, also ties into King's seven-part Dark Tower series, as does a large portion of his other works.

Last week's winners:

1 star to corbett: "After the office Christmas party, I didn't know how to say... 'I'm sorry I gave you gonorrhea.'"
2 stars to Toby OB: "Coming soon in a DVD boxed set for 'The Mary Tyler Moore Show': the "lost" episode, in which Mary Richards declares her true feelings for Ted Baxter....."
3 stars to orimental: "Sir, these were sent by your children to be put on your grave. Where would you like me to place them?"

This week, a scene from the first episode of Nightmares & Dreamscapes:

It hasn't even aired on television yet (it starts on Wednesday on TNT), but Warner will release the DVD set for the Stephen King miniseries Nightmares & Dreamscapes on October 24.

In addition to episodes starring Steven Weber, William Hurt, Kim Delaney, and Tom Berenger, the set will include an extended episode starring William H. Macy that won't air on the TV version of the miniseries. The set will also have commentaries and documentaries.

Take a look at Keith's preview of the show here.

I'm a fan of Stephen King's writing, though more specifically, I enjoy his short stories. I've read a few of King's larger works, but sometimes I just need a quick beginning-to-end read in one night, and books like 'Skeleton Crew,' 'Night Shift' and 'Nightmares & Dreamscapes' fit the bill nicely.

TNT has a new series debuting next week that pays homage to several of King's short works, titled Nightmares & Dreamscapes: From the Stories of Stephen King. Though the title matches that of one of King's compilations of short stories, there are episodes covering stories from other books of King's as well.

Case in point, the premiere episode, 'Battleground,' comes from King's 1978 book, 'Night Shift.' Does the episode do the 10-page story justice? Read on for my thoughts.

In 1990, when I was in middle school, ABC aired a two-part miniseries based on Stephen King's gargantuan novel IT. I had a television in my room, so I had a place to watch shows my parents didn't want to watch, so I stretched out on my bed and watched the movie. Perhaps I was just a wuss (and I was) but the movie scared the living crap out of me. Fast forward to college, and my then girlfriend and I decide to rent IT, which I had not seen since those two nail-biting nights in my room back in 1990. I have to say I didn't have the same reaction as before. I found it to be rather mediocre, and mildly frightening at best. Also, by that time I had actually read the book, so I knew what most fans of King's work already know, which is that movie and television adaptations of his work can be very hit and miss, but mostly miss.

But that's not going to stop them from trying it again. Peter Filardi, who already adapted 'Salem's Lot for TNT and is helming "The Road Virus Heads North" segment of the upcoming Nightmares and Dreamscapes series, told Fangoria he's developing IT for the SciFi Channel. Originally he was to make a two-hour version of the novel for TNT, but will instead stretch it out to a four-hour movie for SciFi. The article further states that the adaptation will tell the story "through the eyes of the character of Beverly Marsh."

Despite what the Internet Movie Database says, Desperation, the next TV adaptation of a Stephen King novel, will be produced as a feature for ABC, not a miniseries. King, on his official Web site, is singing the praises of director Mick Garris (who also helmed other King television adaptations such as The Stand and The Shining) and a cast which includes Ron Perlman, Henry Thomas, and Tom Skerritt. The question is: will it actually be as good as King says? Probably not, but both The Stand and The Shining were decent miniseries, especially when compared to such dreck as The Tommyknockers (where the cast seemed unaware of what movie they were in most of the time) and The Langoliers which ended with some awesome digital effects of creatures devouring time and space but was preceded by two hours of actors devouring my will to live.