Now that horror auteur Mike Flanagan has his next Stephen King project lined up, we’re all chomping at the bit to see how it’s going to turn out. This time, he’s adapting the King classic Carrie as a series, starring Summer H. Howell as the bullied girl whose rage eventually unleashes a fury of hell on her classmates — and now, in a new interview with Comic Book, star Matthew Lillard is teasing how Flanagan is updating the series for a modern audience.
“The exciting thing for me here is that he crafted an idea based around what we’re experiencing right now in the world,” the Scream star says, “and shared that with Stephen King, and then Stephen King was like, ‘Oh, that's a great idea.’ So, it's Stephen King's first published book, it has gone through all these iterations. I think the exciting thing here is that Mike has found a way to make it relevant right now, and I think that it speaks to what we're all experiencing, and so I think that that's going to make a difference.”
I’d argue that Carrie has always been relevant, even in its original form, if you’ve ever experienced the horror of being a teenage girl, but given Flanagan’s talent in adding nuance to his stories, whether it’s adaptations like Haunting of Hill House or original works like Midnight Mass, he’s certainly got something up his sleeve to give the story a fresh coat of paint (or blood) for a new generation.
Originally published in 1974, Carrie was King’s first novel, which was made into a film just two years later. Directed by Brian de Palma and starring scream queen Sissy Spacek, the adaptation was an instant hit, even if it changed some aspects of the novel (including Carrie’s weight), and is largely considered the best adaptation of the novel to date. A sequel, The Rage: Carrie 2, was released in 1999 to dismal reviews and even worse box office numbers, and a new version of the novel was also made in 2013, starring Chloë Grace Moretz as Carrie White.
Mike Flanagan’s Carrie series has not yet set a release date.
