Another Stephen King project looks to be heading to the small screen, with Deadline reporting that Blumhouse Television has set Lucy Liu to star in a limited series adaptation of the author’s 2021 Hard Case Crime novel Later.
The adaptation is being created by Raelle Tucker (True Blood) and will see Liu playing literary agency owner Tia, “who is raising her son Jamie alone and finds herself on the brink of professional ruin when her star author client dies before turning out the work that will make her agency financially whole. Jamie has the supernatural ability to talk to the dead, all of whom tell him the truth. This is very helpful when he talks to the dead author and feeds the contents of the book to his mother, who writes it herself and publishes it under the author’s name, to great success. But this gift can be used for more nefarious purposes. Tia’s police detective girlfriend figures out what the boy can do, and soon the youth gets over his head in the spirit world, as Danny Torrance did in King’s The Shining.”
“Later is terrifying and touching and wonderfully weird — of course it is, it’s Stephen King,” said Tucker. “Adapting one of my favorite writers of all time, with an incredible partner like Blumhouse and the incomparable Lucy Liu, is a dream come true.”
“I’ve wanted to work with Stephen King since before I was born, which sounds impossible until you remember that it’s Stephen King,” added Blumhouse founder Jason Blum, whose company just wrapped production on a feature adaptation of King’s Mr. Harrigan’s Phone for Netflix.
“I’ve wanted to work with Jason Blum for years, and now we have two projects together,” said King. “Go, me!”