EXORCIST Scribe Jeremy Slater To Possibly Make TOMMYKNOCKERS Watchable
The Tommyknockers is a monumentally shitty novel. Hell, Stephen King himself once called it "awful". Penned at the height of the horror master's cocaine addiction - though it's tough to tell when his nose reached the apex of its hunger for white powder (since, you know, he doesn't even remember writing Cujo) - it's a massive doorstop of sci-fi alien invasion ideas that never come together, as a New England man finds a spaceship in his backyard.
However, quality has never stopped Hollywood from bringing a work to the big screen. Hell, they already made The Tommyknockers into an equally interminable '93 TV miniseries (starring Jimmy Smits) with rubbery creature SFX that would make David 'The Rock' Nelson wince. Since every King property is up for grabs in the wake of IT's massive success, we're getting a new filmic iteration of this sprawling metaphor for addiction, almost like studios are offering up big screen dares for even the hardest-core Constant Readers.
Universal Pictures and James Wan are producing the project, and have now hired former Exorcist showrunner Jeremy Slater to pen this take on Tommyknockers. Slater has been bopping around for a while now, having written the lo-fi horror picture Pet, along with The Lazarus Effect and Adam Wingard's Death Note remake. None of those movies are particularly good, but showed that Slater is a talented genre enthusiast who's due to knock one out of the park at some point.
Thankfully, Slater served as showrunner and wrote for The Exorcist series, which proved that he could take a bad idea (like making The Exorcist into a TV series) and turn it into gold (which is precisely the sort of skillset he's going to need for a new Tommyknockers picture). Slater also has The Umbrella Academy series coming for Netflix, which should be a trip if it sticks to the source.
No director has been attached or release date eyed as of yet. Of course, we'll keep all you Constant Readers updated as this possibly ill-advised picture proceeds.
