Stephen King’s Joyland TV show coming to Freeform
By Shawn Lealos
Stephen King’s Joyland is his latest book to get the television treatment as Freeform has started development on the story.
For those unfamiliar with this book, Stephen King’s Joyland is one of his Hard Case Crime novels. The book was released in 2013 and followed his 2005 Hard Case Crime release The Colorado Kid.
Hard Case Crime is a pulp-style novel series that has attracted writers as varied as Michael Crichton, Lawrence Block, Samuel Fuller, Donald Westlake and Stephen King, among others, to write hard case crime stories.
Stephen King’s Joyland tells the story of a kid who takes a job at a summer carnival in North Carolina called Joyland.
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While there, he learns that there is a legend of a ghost that haunts one of the rides and ends up involved in a murder mystery.
Much like fans of King would expect, there is a lot of supernatural in this story, including ghosts that Devin meets along the way.
There is no telling how Freeform will approach the story, although Deadline reported that the synopsis included Devin taking the job at the amusement park, confronting the legacy of a murder and his friendship with a dying child (also part of the book).
The Colorado Kid was also adapted for television with major changes as the SyFy series Haven, so this Freeform series could look completely different than the novel.
Chris Peña (Jane the Virgin) and Cyrus Nowrasteh (The Stoning of Soraya M) will write the pilot and produce the series.
Stephen King’s Joyland joins other shows based on the works of the Master of Horror that has recently hit television.
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Mr. Mercedes, based on King’s detective novels with a supernatural twist airs on Audience Network, Castle Rock just finished its premiere season on Hulu, and a 10-part miniseries based on The Outsider is also in development.
There have also been rumors that Stephen King’s The Stand will get another television series, possibly airing on CBS All Access.