Here Be Monsters: Mike Flanagan Tackling New Film Adaptation of Stephen King's The Mist

Mike Flanagan is about to unleash all the monsters in brand-new film adaptation of Stephen King's 1980 novella, The Mist.

Flanagan, who previously tackled three King books for the big screen—Gerald's Game, Doctor Sleep, and The Life of Chuck—is set to write, direct, and produce the movie on behalf of Warner Bros. Pictures, Deadline reported Feb. 10.

The studio has enjoyed a prolific turnout of King adaptations over the last decade with 11.22.63, Castle Rock, The Outsider, Doctor Sleep, 'Salem's Lot, Andy Muschietti's IT duology, and the accompanying prequel series, Welcome to Derry.

And let's not forget—WB is also the company that distributed The Shining and The Green Mile.

Stephen King's The Mist headed for the big screen...again

Flanagan's foray into The Mist marks Hollywood's third stab at the material following Frank Darabont's 2007 film and the short-lived television series that ran on Spike TV in the summer of 2017.

Collected in King's 1985 story assemblage Skeleton Crew (following an initial publication in the 1980 anthology entitled Dark Forces), The Mist follows a group of people trapped inside a grocery store in Bridgton, Maine after a strange fog concealing a nightmarish menagerie of vicious, otherworldly monsters appears one summer morning.

The narrative is told from the perspective of David Drayton, a local artist and father who bears witness to the gradual breakdown of civility and logical reasoning in the face of blind terror and the primal instinct to survive at all costs. While the origin of the mist and creatures are never fully explained, the novella heavily hints that they were the result of the Arrowhead Project, a top-secret government experiment to explore parallel dimensions.

Featuring the talents of Thomas Jane, Andre Braugher, Laurie Holden, and Marcia Gay Harden, the 2007 film was a moderate box office success, grossing nearly $60 million against an $18 million budget. Thought not as critically acclaimed as Darabont's other two Stephen King movies—The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile—his big screen adaptation of The Mist forever cemented its place in cinematic horror history with a bleaker-than-bleak ending, which the author actually prefers to the original.

Darabont explained that he wanted to make a throwback creature feature with some heavy themes about the nature of humanity bubbling just under the surface.

"When I was reading it, somehow I just pictured one of those low-budget movies that we grew up all watching," he said as part of a 15th anniversary oral history compiled by Slash Film in 2022. "In my case, pre-video, late at night usually on some creature feature. It just reminded me of that sort of '50s, early '60s, low-budget, usually black and white, grainy kind of horror movie. It just felt like one of those things. And that appealed to me greatly as well. So it's a fascinating balance to me between very high-brow and very low-brow elements. And nobody does that better than Stephen King."

In addition to The Mist Mike Flanagan's slate is currently packed to the brim with covetable horror projects, including a new take on The Exorcist and two King-related TV shows based on Carrie and The Dark Tower.