The New Carrie TV Series Might Now Be Part of an Even Bigger Franchise (Along With Another Stephen King Remake)
Mike Flanagan surprised many people when announcing that one of his first projects for Amazon MGM Studios would not be his highly anticipated Dark Tower adaptation, but instead a remake of Stephen King’s debut novel Carrie. Having delivered some of Netflix’s most popular horror series with The Haunting of Hill House, Midnight Mass, and The Fall of the House of Usher, and other King adaptations such as Doctor Sleep, Flanagan’s initial announcement about a TV adaptation of Carrie saw many fans asking the question of why? With the original 1976 movie and two subsequent remakes already out there, reasons to adapt the story of Carrie White and her telekinetic abilities again seemed pointless. Now that all eight episodes of the series are available to watch on Prime Video, the purpose of Flanagan’s modernized take on Carrie may have become clearer. Beware of spoilers in the rest in this article.
Stephen King is well known for his world building in not just single-volume 1000+ page novels, but across his entire catalog, where many of the stories he had published in the last half a century all have some kind of connection to his epic Dark Tower novels. Over the years, King has succeeded in telling the story of Roland of Gilead and his quest to make it to the Tower but also tied novels to it that were written before the path of Roland was clear, such as Salems Lot, The Shining, and now, in Flanagan’s adaptation, Carrie. The original novel is a fairly simple story of a young girl who, after being tormented by a fanatically religious mother and cruel school bullies, causes devastation with her supernatural abilities. While Flanagan’s series tells that same story – just with cell phones and the internet as well as more fleshed out supporting characters – by the end of the first episode it seems that Carrie has more than just telekinesis; she has the Shining.
Stephen King Characters That “Shine”
In his 1978 novel The Shining, King introduced Jack, Wendy, and Danny Torrance as well as the ultimate haunted hotel, the Overlook. In that story, Danny Torrance has an ability to speak and communicate with people using his mind, as well as to see the dead. This is an ability the hotel’s cook, Dick Halloran, also has, and he calls shining. Recently, HBO series It: Welcome to Derry saw Halloran making an appearance in the history of Pennywise the Dancing Clown, and exploring his shining at a point years before his encounter with Danny Torrance at the Overlook. Now in Carrie, the first episode ends with teenager projecting images of her blood-smeared fingers and traumatic screams into the mind of another girl in a mysterious facility where it appears someone has been looking for Carrie.
While Danny Torrance did not have telekinetic abilities, Carrie’s powers in this series are a version of the shining, something confirmed in the final episode by the shady group now hunting for her. This seems too much of a coincidence not to be Flanagan’s direct link between this series and his potential Dark Tower project. In several Dark Tower related stories, such as Black House, children with incredible mental abilities are exploited by those looking to break the “beams” that hold the Dark Tower and every reality in place. Other characters from King’s works, such as Hearts In Atlantis‘ Ted Brautigan have all had a part to play in the story of the Tower with the powers that Carrie now has.
Mike Flanagan’s Next Remake Could Also Be Part of the Dark Tower Puzzle
Along with his upcoming Exorcist movie, Flanagan is also working on another Stephen King remake in the form of The Mist. Originally a short story from King’s Skeleton Crew collection, The Mist tells of a group of people trapped in a local mall when an impenetrable mist descends around it, bringing with it Lovecraftian monsters from another world. The Mist was made into a movie by Frank Darabont in 2007, and then a three-season TV series in 2017. Once again, The Mist has links to the Dark Tower thanks to the existence of “thinnies,” places in reality where space and time have eroded, potentially allowing monsters found in the spaces between worlds to leak through. Although this movie is set at Warner Bros. rather than Amazon MGM Studios, that is not to say that Flanagan will not seek to tie all these projects together as it would make sense to have Warner Bros. in the mix for a simple reason.
Just as Warner Bros. own the rights to The Lord of the Rings, but Amazon MGM Studios bought and own the rights to the appendices and other Tolkien texts that have become the basis for their Rings of Power series, they also own the rights to many Stephen King movies that have a link to The Dark Tower. Flanagan has previous said that before he can really begin working on King’s magnum opus there are a lot of character rights that need to be resolved. This will include Salems Lot, It, The Shining, and the movie version of The Dark Tower. The new version of The Mist could now become just another part of what Warner Bros. already owns. In addition to this, the most recent version of The Stand, and the character of Randall Flagg, came from a joint venture between Amazon and new Warner Bros. partners Paramount, making it very likely that Flanagan’s work on The Mist could also end up joining Carrie and tying into his Tower project in one way or another.
Is Mike Flanagan the person to bring all of King’s stories together at the foot of the Dark Tower? Has Carrie been given the shining to become part of the wider universe? Let us know what you think of the new series in the comments.
