Summary
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Salem’s Lot
remake will head straight to streaming, skipping theaters entirely. - The movie, based on Stephen King’s popular work, was originally set to debut in theaters but faced delays and reshoots.
- The new film follows the novel’s premise of a writer returning to a town overrun by vampires, with a cast including Lewis Pullman and Alfre Woodard.
The mystery of when we will see Gary Dauberman’s take on Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot has finally been solved after the film was pulled from the 2022 release calendar. Per Deadline, Warner Bros. Discovery has announced that the film will skip theaters entirely and premiere exclusively on the Max streaming service this year. An official date for when it will hit the platform was not revealed, but it felt like this was the direction this release was taking, despite CEO David Zaslav asserting that the company was going all in on theatrical and was stepping away from straight-to-streaming releases.
Salem’s Lot was originally positioned by New Line/Warner Bros. to be a big horror player in the same way that the It franchise was. That series cleared $1.1 billion across two entries and was also adapted from one of King’s popular works. The studio even brought on the co-writer of those films, Gary Dauberman, to pen, direct, and produce Salem’s Lot, likely hoping to achieve similar success.
Salem’s Lot Was Originally Set for a Theatrical Release
Salem’s Lot
- Release Date
- November 17, 1979
- Cast
- David Soul , James Mason , Lance Kerwin , Bonnie Bedelia , Lew Ayres
The movie was originally set to debut during the Labor Day weekend slot of 2022, another space that proved successful for It: Chapter One and It: Chapter Two, but it was suddenly pulled from the schedule amid reports that the film needed reshoots. The movie was then moved to April 2023 but was again pushed from that date, in favor of Evil Dead Rise. Following that announcement, the film remained undated until the current news that it would be heading straight to streaming.
Salem’s Lot Star Teases Lingering Terror to Come in New Stephen King Adaptation
The new big-screen version of Stephen King’s vampire novel Salem’s Lot is without a release date, but star Lewis Pullman has promised new terror.
Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot was released in 1975, and it was previously adapted into a 1979 two-part miniseries directed by Tobe Hooper and a 2004 television miniseries directed by Mikael Solomon. The novel follows a writer named Ben Mears who returns to the town of Jerusalem’s Lot in Maine to discover that the residents are turning into vampires. When the 1979 miniseries premiered on CBS, it received positive reviews and gained a considerable cult following over the years.
A theatrical sequel was released in 1987 called A Return to Salem’s Lot, which was directed by Larry Cohen. The 2004 miniseries received decent reviews and also starred Rob Lowe and Rutger Hauer.
The premise of the new film pretty much matches the previous installments, with Ben Mears returning to his childhood home to find it being preyed upon by a vampire. This leads him to band together with a group of people in town to fight against it. The film stars Lewis Pullman, Makenzie Leigh, Bill Camp, Pilou Asbaek, Alfre Woodard, and William Sadler.
