Stephen King talks ‘Under the Dome’ season 2, the novel and ‘Dark Tower’ movie
Stephen King’s novels have shaped pop culture over decades and one of his creations, Under the Dome, is set to return for their second season. Unlike many projects, King is intricately involved.
“It’s a responsibility to be directly involved,” King said in the Buzz Feed interview. “I sometimes tell people that the ideal situation is, if the thing is a success you can say, ‘It’s based on my work.’ If the thing is not a success, you can say, ‘Well, I didn’t have anything to do with it.’ You’re in great shape either way. But once you’re involved, you’re putting some of your own ego and some of your own track record, if you will, on the line.”
Season one was highly successful, following the struggles in Chester Mill after the mysterious dome fell over the city, cutting off all contact with the rest of the world. The pace and details diverge from the original, a process which changed a lot during the initial writing.
“When I was writing Under the Dome, my feeling was that it would stretch out over a period of months or even a year, and you would see a kind of reflection of what goes on in the world as resources run out and pollution increases and overpopulation becomes a problem,” he said. “All the problems in our daily life, I would reflect in Chester’s Mill over a period of time. But the book took over, and it ended up being three or four weeks.”
He goes on, conceding to the length of the book, over 1,000 pages.
“I know it’s a very long novel,” King continued, “but it covers a very short time. So when they came to me with the TV show and said, ‘We want, if the show’s a success, to cover months and years,’ I thought, Oh man, this is what I wanted to do in the first place!”
King explains the appeal of the show, allowing new creative ideas and interpretations.
“When [executive producers] Neal Baer and Brian Vaughan said, ‘We want to take this in some different directions,’ I thought to myself, This is cool,” King said. “In a way, I’ll get a chance to see all the different things I could have done if I’d just taken another road. Because in another way, writing a book or writing a story is like being in a room that has a lot of doors. I chose one to go through, but you only get one choice when you’re writing a novel. So this is getting a chance to go back.”
Fans also get an update on the Dark Tower adaptation which has completely stalled.
“I was very excited when Ron Howard got involved with that project,” King said. “His original take on it was the best. He wanted to do the movies — three tentpole movies — interspersed with a number of TV series that covered Roland and his adventures as a young man. It was a brilliant concept, and I’m pretty sure it would have worked. [But] what sometimes happens in Hollywood and in filmmaking is, the financing fell apart, or the studio started to have second thoughts.”
Check out the full interview HERE
Under the Dome season 2 begins June 30 on CBS
