James Wan and and It writer Gary Dauberman to adapt Stephen King's Salems Lot

By Sam Barsanti | April 23, 2019 | 10:36pm

Aux Features Film

James Wan and and It writer Gary Dauberman to adapt Stephen King's Salems Lot

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The Dark Tower couldn’t stop it and Pet Sematary couldn’t stop it, and so the Stephen King adaptation machine continues unabated, chewing up those thick horror novels you loved in high school and spitting out movies and TV shows that are occasionally good but often… not good. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the next King book to get the adaptation treatment is Salem’s Lot, with The Conjuring’s James Wan and It co-writer Gary Dauberman working to turn the book into a movie for New Line. Wan will produce, as no director is attached yet, but we do know that Dauberman—who also worked on The Conjuring and will make his directorial debut on the next Annabelle movie—will be writing the script.

For anyone who missed Salem’s Lot or any of the previous adaptations—Rob Lowe starred in one 15 years ago for TNT!—the book is about a writer (in a Stephen King book?!) who moves to a small town in Maine (in a Stephen King book?!) so he can write a book about a weird house. Unfortunately, the house has been bought by a guy from Europe who may or may not be a vampire and may or may not be planning to turn everyone in the town into his vampire soldiers. Also, the priest in the book eventually ends up in the parallel universe of The Dark Tower, where he later finds a copy of the book Salem’s Lot from our reality, but that’s probably not going to be relevant here. Actually, since the Dark Tower movie was so awful, that probably won’t ever be relevant anywhere, so just forget you read it.