Stephen King projects are frequently bought by the studios for TV and movie adaptations, and with the box office success of IT, we wouldn't expect that to slow down. Which is why it comes as no surprise that this week another Stephen King story has been picked up, this one a short story. "Suffer The Little Children," from King's Nightmares & Dreamscapes, is about to be made into a feature film.
News broke this week that writer and director Sean Carter is bringing Suffer The Little Children to the big screen. If you know anything about the short story, you probably know that it's another of Stephen King's supernatural thrillers which follows creatures who inhabit the bodies of young school children, driving an adult teacher named Miss Emily Sidley insane. In this new movie version, the teacher will be a divorced teacher of first graders, and she will notice that the way they play is bizarre and that there may be something nefarious lurking underneath their innocent faces.
The project has already been adapted to the screen as one of the "Dollar Baby" projects that Stephen King has granted permission for aspiring filmmakers and students to make, giving them the rights to use his stories for a buck. Frank Darabont was notably a Dollar Baby early on, and went on to film more King films for the big screen.
As for Suffer The Little Children, now that there will be more budget money around the project, the story will be getting a few bigger names attached. Per Deadline, Nicolas Chartier, Sriram Das and Craig Flores will be producing the film. Director Sean Carter just finished work on his first full-length film, Keep Watching, which stars Bella Thorne and The Walking Dead's Chandler Riggs.
As for Suffer The Little Children, if the movie can get off of the ground fast, it could be part of a wave of Stephen King projects that have been and are currently in the works. Along with the Dark Tower and IT movies, Hulu has Castle Rock coming up, and new series Mr. Mercedes has been getting good reviews. IT 2 has also been planned, and will reportedly follow the adult parts of the book that were left out of IT.
Obviously, some of these projects have fared better than others. IT has been a wild box office success in its first week, pulling in $123 million -- and not even on a holiday weekend. It's the largest opening in September for any movie ever, and it has, in fact, blown the competition out of the water. Meanwhile, the Dark Tower big screen outing struggled to make over $100 million worldwide. So, while IT has made it clear there's still an appetite for Stephen King out there, there's no guarantee that Suffer The Little Children would be able to find the same level of success. Now, where's that CUJO remake?
