Things have been relatively quiet on the Jonathan Demme front in recent years, with Rachel Getting Married in 2008, but other than that he’s largely been making documentaries. However now it seems the Silence Of The Lambs and Philadelphia director is ready to get back in the fiction game, as Variety reports that he’s planning to write and direct an adaptation of Stephen King’s upcoming book, 11/22/63.
As you may or may not have surmised, the title refers to the date JFK was assassinated, but the novel gives things a bit of a sci-fi spin. Here’s the synopsis of the book from King’s website, ‘Jake Epping is a thirty-five-year-old high school English teacher in Lisbon Falls, Maine, who makes extra money teaching adults in the GED program. He receives an essay from one of the studentsa gruesome, harrowing first person story about the night 50 years ago when Harry Dunnings father came home and killed his mother, his sister, and his brother with a hammer. Harry escaped with a smashed leg, as evidenced by his crooked walk.
‘Not much later, Jakes friend Al, who runs the local diner, divulges a secret: his storeroom is a portal to 1958. He enlists Jake on an insaneand insanely possiblemission to try to prevent the Kennedy assassination. So begins Jakes new life as George Amberson and his new world of Elvis and JFK, of big American cars and sock hops, of a troubled loner named Lee Harvey Oswald and a beautiful high school librarian named Sadie Dunhill, who becomes the love of Jakes lifea life that transgresses all the normal rules of time.’
It all sounds a little nuts, with staple King fittings such as an intriguing premise and somewhat random sci-fi/fantasy elements (and with odd echoes of the Nicholas Lyndhurst sitcom, Goodnight Sweetheart). It’ll be interesting to see what Demme does with it.
That’s if it ever gets off the ground, as there’s been interest in numerous King books in recent years, from Cell to Under The Dome, but none has got off the ground as yet. The Dark Tower is also stalled, and while a multi-movie version of The Stand is in development, it’s a long way off. It’s a far cry from the days when King sneezed and it was adapted by Hollywood into a film.