Two years ago, it was announced that Paul Greengrass – director of most of the films in the Jason Bourne franchise – was set to direct a film adaptation of the Stephen King novel Fairy Tale (you can pick up a copy HERE)… but now the plan has changed. Deadline reports that A24 has come on board to produce the King adaptation as a 10 episode TV series. Greengrass had been working on a feature script, but will now be building that script out into 10 episodes with J.H. Wyman, who will be the showrunner. Wyman’s previous credits include Fringe, Almost Human, and Debris. Greengrass, Wyman, and King will serve as executive producers on the show with Peter Rice, and Greengrass is expected to be involved as director to some degree. We’ll have to wait and see how many episodes he ends up directing.
When Greengrass was trying to turn Fairy Tale into a feature, the project was set up at Universal. Universal lost interest and dropped it, so Rice, a fan of the source material, brought it to its new home at A24, where it was decided that the story would work better as a series.
Fairy Tale follows a seventeen-year-old boy who inherits the keys to a parallel world where good and evil are at war, and the stakes could not be higher—for their world or ours. Charlie Reade looks like a regular high school kid, great at baseball and football, a decent student. But he carries a heavy load. His mom was killed in a hit-and-run accident when he was ten, and grief drove his dad to drink. Charlie learned how to take care of himself—and his dad. Then, when Charlie is 17, he meets a dog named Radar and his aging master, Howard Bowditch, a recluse in a big house at the top of a big hill, with a locked shed in the backyard. Sometimes strange sounds emerge from it. Charlie starts doing jobs for Mr. Bowditch and loses his heart to Radar. Then, when Bowditch dies, he leaves Charlie a cassette tape telling a story no one would believe. What Bowditch knows, and has kept secret all his long life, is that inside the shed is a portal to another world. King’s storytelling in Fairy Tale soars. This is a magnificent and terrifying tale about another world than ours, in which good is pitted against overwhelming evil, and a heroic boy – and his dog – must lead the battle.
When Greengrass first picked up the rights to Fairy Tale, he and King released statements complimenting each other. King said, “Needless to say, I’m a Paul Greengrass fan and think he’s a wonderful choice for this film.” Greengrass added, “Fairy Tale is a work of genius. A classic adventure story and also a disturbing contemporary allegory.”
Are you glad to hear that Greengrass and A24 are teaming up to turn King’s Fairy Tale into a 10 episode series? Share your thoughts on this one by leaving a comment below.