Photo: Gregg DeGuire / Getty Images for Turner
Let’s see: stocky child, supernatural alternative dimension, epic journey. Yes, that’s all there is to it. According to Hollywood Reporter, Steven Spielberg connects powerful, mystical forces with Stranger things creators Matt and Ross Duffer to develop a TV series based on one of the few (but only jokes; there are still dozens) Stephen King works yet to be adapted: 1984s The Talisman, which King co-wrote with Peter Straub. Stranger things Alum Curtis Gwinn will apparently write and showrun the series, which is produced by Netflix, Spielberg’s Amblin Television and Paramount Television Studios.
Per THR, Spielberg has the film rights to The Talisman two years before the fantasy novel was ever published, but could never turn it into a movie as planned. The book follows the paranormal adventures of Jack Sawyer, a twelve-year-old boy who is tasked with finding a crystal known as the Talisman to save his mother from cancer. To do so, he must travel throughout the United States and to ‘the territories’, a parallel universe of our own, populated by ‘twins’ of all on the ordinary, original taste Earth. And if that was not enough to convince Stranger things fans this show is probably for them: there are werewolves too.