Bev Vincent reports the following in his forum:
Veronica Mars' creator, Rob Thomas, said that next season there will be three mysteries, which will be broken up into nine, seven, and six episodes respectively. He also revealed that he offered EW columnist Stephen King the chance to guest-star on an upcoming episode as a kooky sociology professor. Unfortunately, King was busy.
Los Angeles, Ca—Creature and Character artist Lee Romaire of Romaire Studios recently completed special make-up effects for the premier installment of NIGHTMARES AND DREAMSCAPES, a TNT television mini-series adapted from Stephen King’s collection of short stories.
Nightmares & Dreamscapes got a strong start.
The TNT anthology "Nightmares & Dreamscapes: From the Stories of Stephen King" scared up strong ratings in its Wednesday debut, finishing No. 1 and No. 2 in basic cable for the night with back-to-back episodes.
The first installment of the anthology, the William Hurt-starring "Battleground," drew 5.2 million total viewers at 9 p.m. More importantly, its 18-49 and 25-54 demo totals were the highest a scripted cable series has seen year-to-date, topping a mark set last week by the new USA Network drama "Psych."
A second "Nightmares" episode at 10 p.m., "The Crouch End," reached 4.8 million.
The narrator for Lisey's Story has been chosen and she is...Mare Winningham. She has been seen in such things as Grey's Anatomy, Six Feet Under and ER.
Bloody Disgusting reports that Kate Walsh joins Cusack and Jackson in 1408.
"Grey's Anatomy" star Kate Walsh has signed on to star opposite John Cusack in Dimension Films' bigscreen Stephen King adaptation 1408, according to Variety. The film, which goes before the cameras this summer in the U.K., also will star Samuel L. Jackson. Cusack plays a debunker of paranormal occurrences who encounters real terror when he checks into the notorious Room 1408 at the Dolphin Hotel. Walsh plays his ex-wife and mother of his young daughter. Mikael Hafstrom ("Derailed") is helming the pic, penned by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski. Matt Greenberg wrote the original script. Lorenzo Di Bonaventura is producing. King's "1408" short story originally was part of an audio book and was subsequently published in the collection "Everything's Eventual."
I just got an email from Tomas Krynsky and he had some really interesting news about the upcoming limited edition of The Colorado Kid:
I recently talked to Pete at PS Publishing, he let me know that Glenn Chadbourne will be the final illustrator for the upcoming Colorado Kid. There's some other changes as well, including the addition of extra traycased editions. Read more here.
Warner Home Video plan to release Nightmares & Dreamscapes on October 24th, just in time for Halloween.
An exclusive found on this 3-DVD set is an unaired extended episode starring William H. Macy. You'll also find commentary tracks with the cast and crew, along with exclusive documentaries. The cost is $39.92 SRP. Here's an early look at the cover art:
Thanks to TVShowsOnDVD, Bev Vincent, Paul Poroshin and Ari
King will be doing a reading/lecture at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall in Portland, Oregon on Nov. 2 as part of the Portland Arts & Lectures program. Tickets range from $30-60 and can be bought at www.literary-arts.org
With only 5 days left until the premier of Nightmares & Dreamscapes TNT has added the following videos to the official site. Here is what you can see:
- Trailer (the same one we have seen earlier)
- A preview of night 1 showing clips and interviews with the cast of Battleground and Crouch End
- An interview with William Hurt (Battleground)
- An interview with Jeremy Sisto (The Fifth Quarter)
- An interview with Richard Thomas (Autopsy Room 4)
- An interview with Steven Weber (You Know They Got a Hell of a Band)
- An interview with Eion Bailey (Crouch End)
- An interview with Tom Berenger (The Road Virus Heads North)
- An interview with Ron Livingston (End of the Whole Mess)
- An interview with William H. Macy (Umney's Last Case)
- Preview of N&D - Page to Picture
The Emmy nominations are out and Desperation got two: Art Direction for a Miniseries, or Movie: "Bleak House (Masterpiece Theatre),'' PBS; "Elizabeth I,'' HBO; "The Girl in the Cafe,'' HBO; "Into the West,'' TNT; "Stephen King's Desperation,'' ABC.
Sound Editing for a Miniseries, Movie or a Special: "Category 7: The End of the World: Night 1,'' CBS; "Flight 93,'' A&E; "Into the West: Manifest Destiny,'' TNT; "Sleeper Cell: Youmud-Din,'' Showtime; "Stephen King's Desperation,'' ABC.
Finally King's radio station WKIT is back on the net... They have always been there with their site but it's been a while since you could listen to them online. I know I for one have missed them. So, support them so we get to keep them online.
Many of you have mailed me about a 2-page pull-out, pop-up advertisement for Nightmares & Dreamscapes. There has been some questions about what this is (and many have been having problems finding it) so now I'm happy to be able to show you a picture of it.
The pop-up is a house of cards revealing the primary characters in the miniseries. It's basically the same image that can be seen on the official site.
The pop-up ad was in some editions of the latest double issue of EW (Jessica Alba on the cover).
Back in February when King did a public reading at FSU in Florida he read a new short story called Memory and since the story has stayed upublished…until now that is.
In the new Tinhouse (Vol. 7, No. 4, issue #28; entitled "Summer Reading") the story can be found. It is called Memory here as well and is approximately 18 pages long.
Here is a quote from Tinhousewebsite:
When I say I was confused, I mean that at first I didn’t know who people were, or what had happened, or why I was in such awful pain.
In today's Parade Magazine (inserted in many Sunday newspapers in the US) there is a full-page feature/interview with King. Starting Wednesday, the full text will be online here.
As we all know it’s not only Stephen who is a writer in the King family. Tabitha has just recently released a book (that she wrote with the now deceased Michael McDowell) called Candles Burning.
The book looks very promising and now finally she has also gotten her own website. So go check it out now!
King keeps busy. In his column The Summer Book Awards he has the following to say:
The truth is I haven’t read as many books as usual, because I’m editing next year’s Best American Short Stories.
This was sent out from Cemetery Dance today:
While The Secretary of Dreams by Stephen King is going through the last round of proofreading, Glenn Chadbourne has updated and modified a number of pages of the artwork, fixing small errors and making them even more detailed than before! Those of you who have seen his work in our other books (The Illustrated Stephen King Trivia Book, Cold River, Bedbugs, plus the endpapers for The Road to the Dark Tower and Stephen King: Uncollected, Unpublished, just to name a few!) know the level of detail we're talking about. There are items hidden in the artwork that you'll be finding years after you read it for the first time! To fully display the details of Chadbourne's amazing artwork, we decided on a 9 X 12 trim size for the book. This will be our tallest and widest book ever, and the final page count has come in at 281 pages. The Secretary of Dreams will be headed to the printer this month and we'll post a firm publication date once they're rolling and they give us a delivery date!
Subterranean Press will release a limited edition of The Green Mile. The book will be released in three different stages and the price will range between $150 and $2,500…in other words. A pretty expensive book. More info can be found here.
This upcoming Sunday season 5 of The Dead Zone will premier and I have taken a look at the first episode, Forbidden Fruit. You can see what I think about it and hope for in season 5 here.
Paramount will release a boxset of four DVDs on September 26th. The box will contain the new Collector's Editions of The Dead Zone and Pet Sematary, plus the already available editions (but likely with new cover art) of Silver Bullet and Graveyard Shift.
Here is the extra material on the discs:
The Dead Zone: Collector's Edition:
- Featurettes
--- Memories from The Dead Zone
--- The Look of The Dead Zone
--- Visions from The Dead Zone
--- The Politics of The Dead Zone
- New interviews with…
--- director David Cronenberg
--- actress Brooke Adams
--- cinematographer Mark Irwin
--- editor Ronald Sanders
--- King biographer Douglas E. Winter.
Pet Sematary: Collector's Edition:
- New audio commentary with director Mary Lambert
- The Making of the Film
- The Characters
- Stephen King Territory
- Featurettes
- New interviews with…
--- director Mary Lambert
--- actor Dale Midkiff
--- Brad Greenquist
--- cinematographer Peter Stein
--- King biographer Douglas E. Winter
Both discs will include anamorphic widescreen transfers and Dolby Digital 5.1 & 2.0 tracks. Retail is a mere $14.99 apiece.
TNT has now launched an official site for Nightmares & Dreamscapes with a lot of interesting stuff. It has everything from synopsis of the different episode to images to games based on the different episodes. Be sure to check it out
Here are some news about the remake of IT:
Peter Filardi is becoming the go-to guy for television horror adaptations. The FLATLINERS and THE CRAFT scribe cut his teeth on small-screen scares with 2004’s redux of ’SALEM’S LOT for TNT, and this summer he’s back with the network on THE ROAD VIRUS HEADS NORTH, one of eight Stephen King-based minimovies in the series NIGHTMARES AND DREAMSCAPES, which bows July 12.
During a panel discussion at Fango’s Weekend of Horrors in Burbank, Filardi dished a few details on some fresh projects he’s got in the works. On the King side, the writer told Fango he’s still developing a new televisualization of the author’s epic novel IT (previously done as a two-part ABC movie in 1990). Originally slated for TNT as a two-hour movie, IT has now caught the interest of the Sci Fi Channel, which wants to stretch it out (and rightfully so!) to a four-hour broadcast event. You may recall that early reports stated Filardi’s approach to the material would be to tell IT through the eyes of the character of Beverly Marsh.
The Stationary Bike Contest is now over and here are the right answers:
Question 1 : Name another King audio that Ron McLarty has narrated. Answer 1 : Salem’s Lot and Faithful
Question 2 : Where were Stationary Bike first published? Answer 2 : Borderlands 5
Question 3 : Name one audio book that King himself has narrated. Answer 3 : He has narrated a lot of books but some titles that where mentioned are Bag of Bones, Blood and Smoke, LT’s Theory of Pets, On Writing and The Gunslinger.
And the 10 winners are:
Dave Carson, the US
Bob Ireland, the US
Ian McQuillan, the UK
Stephen Bamberg, the US
Dana Watts, the US
Sharon Haas, the US
Jana Long, the US
Eric Enderle, the US
Matthias Belz, Germany
David Carroll, Australia
Here is a message from King about Tabitha's book that was sent out to the official sites mailing list.
CANDLES BURNING, a unique collaboration between Tabitha King (my wife) and the late Michael McDowell (creator of BEETLEJUICE and screenwriter of THINNER, not to mention the frightening BLACKWATER series), is available in bookstores now. This one will put the ice in your summer drink--and I'd be telling you that even if the lady in question WASN'T my wife!