The Deadly Mist...

Thanks to the New England Anomaly's mailing list for the tipoff about the lastest film to emerge from the crucible of Stephen King's short fiction. This time it's The Mist, found in the book Skeleton Crew . The film is being put together in partnership with Darkwood Productions. Sounds very exciting, all except the part about them NOT FILMING IN MAINE.

Horror movie based on King story to be made in Shreveport
January 18, 2007

SHREVEPORT, La. --A horror movie based on a Stephen King short story will begin shooting in Shreveport late next month.

"The Mist" will be directed by Frank Darabont for Dimension Films, a motion picture unit of The Weinstein Co.

The plans for the movie were confirmed by a company spokesman and are noted on King's Web site.

Kings novella is about a town in Maine that gets enveloped by a supernatural mist. Mysterious creatures of the mist begin attacking humans. A small group of people get trapped in a supermarket and fight to defend themselves and their sanity.

[Source]

Darabont himself was so excited that he released a statement, which was allegedly set to run in Variety magazine. It gives us a little history of the collaboration, which has apparently been in the works for a couple of decades now.

Doing THE MIST is a delight for me on a number of levels. For starters, I've always loved horror as a genre. Not so much the slasher thing, that got tired very quickly in my view, but from my earliest recollection I grew up loving movies that sought to scare the crap out of me, starting with the classic Universal monsters. Well, of course, that love of the genre is what led me to Stephen King's works in the first place, isn't it? So it's time to repay that debt and try to scare the crap out of an audience myself. With Steve's great story, and a little luck, I'm hoping to do just that.

Another reason is, it's a project Stephen King and I have been talking about doing for almost twenty years now, since I first got to know and become friends with the man. In fact, it almost was my first directing project many years ago, but I went classy and did THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION instead. But THE MIST never went away; it's been lurking out there calling my name for a long, long time...and it's time to answer the call; it's time to get down and dirty and make a nasty little character-driven gut-punch horror movie. [...] In a very real sense, I have to thank Danny Boyle, a man I've never met, but whose example in making 28 DAYS LATER really encouraged me. I saw that film, loved it, and thought: Well, why the hell not? Why not go make your scary little movie, shoot it fast, have some fun?
[...]
I can always go back to being the elegant guy later.
[Source]

For more on the story of the production, you may want to also check out an excerpt from a 2004 Fangoria article written when Darabont was typing away at the script.

I wish they would re-release the textbased videogame version of The Mist for Mac...