Stephen King’s The Bone Church to be Developed as a TV Show

Stephen King projects rank just behind comic book superheroes in terms of multimedia ubiquity. Indeed, with last fall’s childhood-scarring terror of It serving as the prime accolade – luring moviegoers into its proverbial storm drain to reap $700 million worldwide – the insane array of movie projects and television shows will soon add another entry: The Bone Church.

The Bone Church is set to be developed as a television series by Cedar Park Entertainment – the company of Chris Long and David Ayer – after having acquiring rights, reports Deadline. The Stephen King-penned source material here is a narrative poem that was originally written back in the 1960s, which, decades later, would be published in the November, 2009 issue of Playboy magazine. King subsequently revised it and published it as part of his 2015 short fiction collection, The Bazaar of Bad Dreams.

King’s The Bone Church is told from the point of view of a disheveled survivor of a harrowing ordeal who is demanding to be bought drinks for his tales. The story depicts – in a poetic manner – a terrifying jungle expedition to locate a forbidden mythical site, called the Bone Church. While 32 people set out on the trip, only three returned, with hints that madness made retroactive victims of the rest, save for the whiskey-demanding narrator. Consequently, just as the television medium managed to turn King’s thin 2005 mystery novel, The Colorado Kid, into the 5-season Syfy series, Haven, the bare-bones poem premise of The Bone Church will require some narrative meat from its creative forces.

While The Bone Church has yet to narrow down a showrunner, the rights-acquiring Chris Long and David Ayer are onboard as executive producers. The project won’t even be the only Stephen King project for Long, who also serves as EP for the (imminently-returning) Audience/DirecTV series, Mr. Mercedes. Ayer, on the other hand, has several irons in the fire as a director, writer and producer, notably with directorial prospects for the developing Batman female rogues spinoff movie, Gotham City Sirens, as well as a sequel to his Will Smith-starring Netflix sci-fi actioner, Bright.

There’s no word yet on when, or, for that matter, where we can expect The Bone Church to manifest. However, Stephen King fans will hardly starve, since projects such as the Hulu television series, Castle Rock, as well as The Shining sequel film project Doctor Sleep are a mere sampling of the King projects that are on tap.