“Carrie” offers a clue to Mike Flanagan’s ‘very different’ “The Mist” movie: ‘It’s a different type of adaptation’ (exclusive)
“Carrie” offers a clue to Mike Flanagan’s ‘very different’ “The Mist” movie: ‘It’s a different type of adaptation’ (exclusive)
Staff AuthorSat, July 25, 2026 at 2:00 PM UTC
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The 2007 Frank Darabont version of ‘The Mist’ with Laurie Holden, Thomas Jane, and Nathan Gamble.Credit: Ron Schmidt/The Weinstein CompanyKey Points -
Mike Flanagan teases his approach to The Mist, likening it to his Carrie TV series.
“My way into the story, through the story, and out of that story is very different,” the filmmaker says.
Flanagan calls it “a different type of adaptation.”
When Mike Flanagan first started adapting the work of literary giant Stephen King, he was all about how to do it faithfully.
With Gerald’s Game (2017), it was about, “How do we take this impossible book and get it onto a screen?” he tells Entertainment Weekly. With Doctor Sleep (2019), it was about taking Stanley Kubrick’s alternative vision of The Shining and making it “harmonize” with the world of King’s novels. Then with The Life of Chuck (2024), “It was very much, How do I just do the book?” he says.
Carrie now marks a fresh approach for the prominent showrunner and filmmaker of the horror genre when it comes to King. The TV drama takes the bare bones of King’s classic tale of a bullied girl with telekinesis and presents a true reimagining. He’s taking the same route for a movie based on The Mist, the novella that the author published in 1980.
Summer H. Howell as Carrie White on ‘Carrie’Credit: Amazon
“With Carrie and with The Mist, they’ve both been done spectacularly well already as feature films,” Flanagan says during a San Diego Comic-Con interview. “So with Carrie, it was very much about finding a new path, trying to find something new to build. The Mist is the same.”
King’s original story centers on a dense mist that rolls through the small town of Bridgton, Maine, concealing monstrous man-eating creatures from another world. David Drayton and his young son join other locals by barricading themselves in a supermarket. Very quickly, the “society” within the store crumbles as those left alive devolve into religious fanaticism and fear mongering.
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Director Frank Darabont adapted the concept into a 2007 movie, starring Thomas Jane as David. The film added more mythology, particularly about the Arrowhead Project, a code name for mysterious military experiments at a nearby army base that sought to open portals to other dimensions.
Thomas Jane and Nathan Gamble in 2007’s ‘The Mist’Credit: Ralph Nelson/The Weinstein Company
“It’s one of the most brutal movies I’ve ever seen,” Flanagan comments on Darabont’s work. “That ending is jaw-dropping. My way into the story, through the story, and out of that story is very different. When I presented that to Steve [King] — that was also important because he loves Frank’s movie — it’s like, Why are we doing this? What are we gonna do that justifies itself? So it’s a different type of adaptation for me.”
He calls both Carrie and The Mist opportunities to “take the LEGOs apart and start building something new.”
“With his blessing, always!” he notes of King. “I would never contemplate it without it. But, yeah, it’s a different way to adapt things for me. And it’s interesting to me that he’s a storyteller whose ideas can have multiple lives.”
on Entertainment Weekly
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
