Easily my favourite Stephen King story has also been one of his most frustrating - at least in terms of its respective movie. Years ago acclaimed filmmaker Frank Darabont ("The Shawshank Redemption") bought the rights to "The Mist", the novella in King's "Skeleton Crew" collection. He's been sitting on it for years, but now finally it seems movement is happening despite all recent King projects ("Dreamcatcher", "Secret Window", "Salem's Lot", "Kingdom Hospital", "Riding the Bullet") failing to garner much in the way of ratings, dollars or even praise. Talking with Fangoria, Darabont says "I am at this very moment writing the adaptation of THE MIST... Depending on a few factors, it may well be the next movie I direct, possibly next year. Finally, my low-budget monster flick! And no, it will not be for television. There's been some confusion out there in geek land about that. THE MIST is a very scary and memorable story, one of Steve's best "muscular" short pieces, with characters in the kind of pressure-cooker environment that nobody writes as well as King. I intend to be faithful to the material, so I think the movie will be good"
The story revolves around a group of strangers trapped inside a supermarket by a bevy of giant and varied monsters that arrive in an unworldly fog and devour anyone who dares step outside. As time passes, some of the people inside begin to seem as big a threat as the critters outside. Darabont talked about who may potentially be handling the project - "Darkwoods and Castle Rock will co-produce together. The project is in development at Paramount, where I have my overall deal with Darkwoods. Whether or not it's a Paramount release depends on what they think of the script."
His approach to the terrifying yarn sounds promising - "Whether it's a studio picture or not, I want to go with a very gritty, low-budget indie approach. Big-budget gloss would work against the material, plus I'm excited about trying my hand at a more seat-of-the-pants filmmaking approach on this one than I've used in the past...I'll use whatever approach works best, I want to go as old-school as possible with the effects. It's a rather old-school story anyway; it feels like a movie that might have been made in the '50s. The thing to bear in mind about THE MIST is that you don't actually see that much as King wrote it; it's the stuff you don't see that scares you, sort of like in JAWS. I want to maintain the tension of King's story rather than overload the screen with CGI monsters".
Thanks to 'Galen'
